


Firewall

by faeleverte, Kathar



Series: Two-Man Rule [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fitz-Simmons, Grant Ward - Freeform, M/M, Melinda May - Freeform, Pheels, Post-Episode: s01e07 The Hub, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:46:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint’s actions in Black Box come back to haunt him - and Skye. The discovery of the hidden camera in Coulson’s office leads to a game of cat and mouse that could break the fragile bonds building within the team… and could destroy the years of trust between Clint and Phil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “Just a short fic,” we said. 
> 
> “Just one final story to bring it all together," we said.
> 
> And then this happened.
> 
> 25,000 words, at least two upcoming WIPs, and a new friendship later, we're still not sure if we regret our life choices. 
> 
> We have deep gratitude and love for our betas J and [Selana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Selana/pseuds/Selana) for their support, encouragement, and sacrificed time and sanity that helped make this monster what it has become. 
> 
> If you're new to the series, it's possible to read this first- we've included anything you must know. But you'll get a richer picture if you start at the beginning. We'll post a chapter daily until complete.
> 
>  

She was so epically fucked.

Like, if there was a Most Hopelessly Boned competition, she'd have retired after taking the gold in four straight Olympics. She'd be the Michael Friggin' Phelps of the Totally Screwed.

It wasn't even her fault. Skye would have felt better if it had been, like last time. Because yes, she really _had_ tried to warn Miles-the-sellout, and any fucking over (above and beyond the reunion sex) had been well-earned.

So if, y'know, this had been like that, then fine-- bring it.

But she hadn't planted the bug! She hadn't even known it _existed_ before Himself stormed in, held out his tie, which on examination proved to contain an adorably tiny bit of tech, backside up, and asked her in a hitched voice whether she recognized it. He’d been rattled to the point of raising both eyebrows, and her mind had just blanked for a moment.

"...?" had been her response. 

It was apparently considered inadequate. Coulson was still Coulson, though, and he calmed down and resettled into his Agent Face after realizing that either her cluelessness was genuine or at any rate she was going to stick with it. 

He sighed, and laid it out for her: the bug had been in his office under the apparently functional skylight of the model of the Bus on his desk. (And c'mon, that was _funny_ , right? It wasn't just Skye?) It was transmitting a visual-only feed, piggybacking off SHIELD’s usual wireless signals. Coulson had only just noticed an unknown device register on the network, then disappear. From there, it had taken only a few minutes to locate the camera. He’d been careful to accidentally-on-purpose drop a tie over the thing before he rousted it out of concealment, so whoever was receiving the stream would remain in the (literal) dark. 

Of course, he'd explained this in front of the whole team. FitzSimmons had looked respectively dismayed and distraught, Ward did that whole stoically constipated routine and May... Skye was not going there, except in nightmares. Not once she realized that for a moment-- a not-so-short moment, they’d all been staring at her.

Judging. 

Ugh. 

So she maybe deserved it, after last time, but it could still hurt, all right? She'd been trying to turn over a new leaf and mend relationships and all that jazz, and she’d totally saved Ward and Fitz’s asses in that fucking non-extraction SHIELD had tried to screw them with a little bit ago. Yes, she’d hacked into SHIELD, from within SHIELD, to do it. And maybe she’d implicated Simmons as well. That had been SHIELD, that had been _done for this team_. 

A bug on the Bus? In their own goddamn space, in Himself’s office, no less? That was _totally_ different, and this was her _team_ , and to have them look at her like that? Well, just _ouch_. 

By the time she'd finished protesting not only her innocence but her ignorance several times over, Coulson had apparently come to some kind of decision.

And so here she was, granted freedom to hack (and Coulson even took that fucking tracking bracelet offline) for long enough to prove her loyalty yet _again_. All she had to do was find the signal again, latch on, and track down the destination of the feed (and totally not have sex with whoever was on the other end this time).

This was not why she was royally screwed, because hello? She had hacked plenty of things plenty of times and not slept with anyone.

Of course, usually, in the middle of hacking, she didn't get little encrypted sub-streams suddenly popping up coming back in her direction. And they weren’t usually also encoded in the private cipher she’d shared with only one person. And they certainly didn’t say

_If you keep tracing this, we're going to have a big problem. And I may not be able to help you anymore._

At which point, it was far too late already. The Bus had already landed and taxied to a stop, she had the tablet in her hand, ready to hand off to Coulson with a little quip and maybe even an "A.C." and--

Look.

Skye would admit she'd always wanted to know what Ronin was like. She imagined him as one of those weedy little guys into anime, or maybe more of a bear with a thing for Kurosawa, or maybe some grizzled, disgruntled ex-spy, but you never knew with the internet, did you? And he was nice, okay? He'd helped her hack into SHIELD in the first place, he'd kept the Rising Tide off her back when she joined SHIELD, she was frankly kind of using him--and apparently he'd been using her as well. But she hadn't given him anything useful in forever and she hadn’t even talked to him since The Bracelet. She was turning over a new leaf like she was a goddamned maple and oh God, no one was going to trust her again if he sold her out. 

Skye had never multitasked so well as at that moment, walking and talking and breathing and sounding calm and generally being a _good teammate_ while also: a) panicking b) explaining that the feed was scrambled and she was just going to take a moment to clear it then c) scrubbing every single trace of that little counter-stream's existence from the tablet, and d) panicking. Some more. 

She was _absolutely certain_ that she'd scrubbed that tablet as clean as she could without dipping it in bleach, dousing it in alcohol, and then setting fire to it and scattering the ashes, so that there was nothing that could be traced back to Ronin, just the feed streaming to a device that was registered to "user 76646." With a hopefully-unnoticed gulp, she passed the tablet to Himself, to show him the location of his watcher. 

She went back into the panic loop when she saw Coulson's face drain of all color.

And this was so _not_ her fault. 

Well-- okay, maybe a little.

______

Phil took the tablet with a steady hand to read the information on the screen. The location meant nothing to him, but there was a number that kept repeating in the data stream at the bottom. 76646. And that was… Oh. Oh dear. Oh fuck. He did a quick mental check to make certain that none of his thoughts were showing on his face; he was pretty sure he was projecting everything.

“We’re tracking this to a stationary location?” he asked, gesturing with the tablet. He shook his head and straightened his shoulders, clearing his throat to steady his voice.

“It’s still not a fixed point,” Skye told him. “Fitz can help me narrow it down from here if I can get closer.”

Phil nodded, eyes locking back on the screen.

“You’re with May and Ward in the Short Bus,” Phil said, allowing himself a moment to marvel at how steady it came out. “FitzSimmons will remain here to help us triangulate a more precise point of origin.”

He let the tablet click gently down on the nearest table and walked away, thoughtfully rolling the tie around the micro-camera and slipping the bundle into the pocket of his jacket. Fitz was already pulling up more information than any one team could need to track one small device, and Phil left him to it. Simmons glanced up once as he left the command center but quickly turned her attention back to Fitz.

Phil trailed up the circular stairs, head whirling. Someone had been watching him, and he had fair evidence that he knew who the someone was. How long? When could the bug have been planted, and who could have put it there? The list of operatives skilled enough to make it on and off the Bus unseen, with access to the technology that would escape the notice of the very thorough sweeps performed by the FitzSimmons braintrust, and with enough of a link to SHIELD to use their securely-encrypted transmission channels was a very short list, indeed. And they were all people Phil knew and respected. That number…. 76646. 

In his office, Phil let himself have a private moment of panic. Surely the numbers meant what he thought they did. And surely only one person was crazy enough to use that identity. And certainly, if the numbers meant what he thought they meant, and if the lunatic was who Phil thought it was, then that moron was already aware that he was being tracked and would have the sense to get out of Wichita before things….

No. There was no guarantee. 

And there was no point in lying to himself; Phil wanted answers, and he knew the only way to find them was to get there first. He could not risk the team learning about the link between Phil and… Him. Worse was the question of why He had not told Phil about the camera; surely if He could get the camera on the Bus, then He could have left a message, could have admitted to planting it, could have trusted Phil to cover it from the team and keep their fragile link safe and open. But, most worrying of all was that Phil alone knew the connection between the stupidly-coded name and the man who was brave enough or dumb enough to use it, and if SHIELD discovered that Phil knew about that connection and had not shared… Well, Phil was really loving his new team and his second-life adventure; he did not want to leave it for a cell in the bowels of SHIELD.

Time to get Lola.

Halfway to the cargo hold, he reached up to unfasten the top button of his shirt and followed it with a second. Holy Hell, his hands were shaking. He was getting ready to try to beat Ward and May to a target, and, if everything went right, he would also be seeing… Him. As he clattered down the spiral stairs to Lola, he quickly thumbed free a third button. If he was right - IF he was right, and he still might not be - it wouldn’t hurt to have a little… advantage. 

Phil slid into the welcoming curve of the driver’s seat and turned the key, stroking his thumb against the steering wheel in greeting. He could do this. Thankfully, Lola knew how to hurry. He backed down the ramp, and paused a moment to watch two men gesturing wildly at the Bus. Pilots, obviously, probably from the WWI biplane and the crop duster behind it that were waiting for clearance to take off. Clearance wouldn’t be forthcoming with the massive wings of the Bus taking up the runway. But that was not Phil’s problem. Well, it probably was his problem, but he was not going to dwell on it. Leaving the pilots to their staring, Phil slid his sunglasses onto his nose, pressed the hovercar button, and let Lola sweep to the west, across open fields, to come at the city from the north.

“Ward, report.” He lifted one finger to his ear as he spoke, activating his comm unit.

“There was some weird tangle trying to get off 35, sir,” Ward answered. “We’re near McConnell Air Force Base. Skye will be linked back to FitzSimmons momentarily.”

“I’m coming in with Lola, setting down on 135, about 12 miles to your north,” Phil said. “I’ll get off the highway in a moment and start to make my way toward the center of the city. Let me know when you begin to narrow down the search.”

Phil was circling around and around a four block swath, listening to Ward’s impatient growling and the lack of replies from May. Something about this area was familiar. Wichita, Wichita… Phil began to sort through the encyclopedia of SHIELD and his previous missions that he carried in his mind, trying to remember when he had been in this city and just where in the city he had been. 76646. Had He been here then, too? Was He here now?

“Just passed you at the last intersection, sir,” May said over the com, and Phil bit back a curse. He was trained to look for large black SUVs with eagles on their sides, and he had missed it. Time to get his head back in the game. If he was correct - and the tightly reducing range of coordinates Skye and Fitz were chanting made it seem more likely each moment - then he knew where he was going, but he had to make certain that he and Lola could get there first without leading the whole team straight to the target.

“Skye! Where’d the feed go?” Fitz’s voice was nearly a squeak in Phil’s ear. “I’ve lost the tracking!”

“Sorry!” Skye answered, sounding flustered. “It’s just not the steadiest thing in the world. Let me see if I can… Just give me one more minute and…”

Phil mentally swore at the midwestern practicality that led to so many of the cities on the plains being laid out in such a tidy grid as he crossed through a light in front of the Short Bus (and that name was going to have to be changed. Soon). He swung a sharp right at the next light to dodge a bit to the north and then made another hard right as soon as he could, hoping the SUV wasn’t following him. Lola picked up speed easily, purring at the chance to show off a bit. 

Adrenaline started to crank through Phil’s body. This was a race, a mission, a game of spy vs spy, and that was something Phil knew better than anyone else at SHIELD with the possible exception of Fury. He could do this. Objective: Lose the Short Bus. Objective: Ascertain the location of the safe house. Objective: Get his hands on one insubordinate asshole and make damn sure this was just another of his ridiculous stunts before deciding whether to have him thrown in a holding cell or tied to Phil’s own bunk for the next six years. Objective: Determine what lack of trust or need for secrecy had kept Phil in the dark about the bug.

The Short Bus took a green light directly across Phil’s path at Broadway and 3rd, so Phil swung right again, heading west, away from the target and away from Ward and May. 

“The feed’s back up!” Fitz shouted triumphantly, and Ward was saying something about joining up with Phil, who ignored them both when he found himself going one way on a very narrow Wrong Way street. He sincerely hoped it was not well-traveled, as the curb was a bit steep for climbing in a Corvette, and using the hover would likely attract attention with which he was not in the mood to deal.

A little fast maneuvering at the next intersection had him traveling south on another one way street, but at least he was now driving the correct direction on the road. Phil was focused on dodging the few slow-moving cars in his way, wondering about pulling out Lola’s lights and sirens when he hit the next intersection where he could finally go east. He pressed another button on the console that killed SHIELD’s tracking and pressed the accelerator just a little harder.

“Short Bus, location?” He asked, interrupting Skye as she began to give another, smaller-still range on the transmission she was chasing.

“North on Saint Francis toward Central Avenue, sir,” came the answer.

“St. Francis is one-way southbound at my end,” Phil said, pleased that his voice came out Agent-calm rather than smug. “I’ll have to keep going and meet up with you elsewhere.”

As he hit the intersection he was searching for, Phil decided to activate the lights and siren to get him through the light. He swung south and left the lights flashing as he raced through a gas station parking lot to head east again a short time later. Then came a corner he thought he recognized, although the aging buildings across the street had been gentrified since his last time here. The one he was to turn just past was empty, but he remembered the club that had been there and the horrified look on Sitwell’s face when the three of them had wandered in during downtime on assignment. Oh yes. Phil knew where he was now. 

“I think I have it,” Skye said. “It’s a bit south of where I originally thought, sending coordinates to you now.”

Damn. Out of time. His team would likely swing in behind the house as there was more cover there. Phil killed the siren, but left the lights flashing as he blew through two stop signs. He jerked Lola to a stop in front of a small, ugly, entirely white house. 

Time to hurry, check his hunch, and - well, he would decide if he should pray that he was right or if he should pray he was wrong when he found out what was waiting on the other side of the obviously-new front door. He smoothed a hand over his hair, and then dipped it into his pocket to pull out the necktie-wrapped microcamera. Four quick steps up to the porch, and he was reaching out to knock a generic SHIELD code against the door when it opened before his knuckles could make contact.

Phil forced his face into his blandest half-smile and raised one eyebrow at the startled expression on the face of the man opening the door.

“Hello, ‘Ronin,’” Phil said. “I think we should talk.”

______  
He'd had a handler once who'd tried to break him of ever using the words "not fair." 

"It's not fair that--" was inevitably followed by "life's not fair, Agent," in the smooth tone of someone rebuking a four year old. (Four year olds, he was pretty sure, were the world's biggest assholes, because everything his handler told him when he was being an asshole himself sounded like something you tell a kid in pre-K.)

Of course, that handler was not currently around and if he wanted to, he could mutter:

"Not fair not fair not fair not fair not fair fuck fuck not fair" under his breath while he tore around the safehouse, shoving the few belongings he'd unpacked back into his bag, swiping the place down with a disinfecting wipe or ten, and taking the time as he ran past his laptop to check and see just how screwed he was.

He stopped, hands on his hips, just long enough to stare at the still-blacked out feed on his screen. It had taken him too long, far too long, to realize that the tie that had dropped oh-so-conveniently on top of the camera's hiding place was not an accident. In his defense, he'd been more than a little distracted by the _other_ implications of the tie's removal, and had to excuse himself for a moment or two. The tie had still been covering the camera when he'd come back, which was worrying in and of itself. His mark didn't treat ties that way. He just didn't.

There had been almost-- almost-- a sense of relief when he'd realized that the continued presence of the tie probably meant his bug had finally been discovered. The relief lasted just long enough for him to realize that, in that case, he was being tracked. If he'd only had the damned sense to wait until he was back home, behind firewalls of solid (metaphorical) vibranium, none of this would be happening. 

"Life's not fair," Clint Barton muttered to himself, just to make sure it got said.

First on the "not fair" list was getting sent to Wichita (again). Deputy Goddamn Director Hill could feed him all the bullshit she wanted about the trust SHIELD was placing in him-- nobody better for the job, needed someone who wasn't going to be phased by anything-- he knew another fucking babysitting assignment when he got one. Leading security for a field team that was trying to intercept a truck with human traffickers-- sorry, "not exactly human" traffickers and their victims-- was fucking babysitting. Out in the fucking sticks. With no one interesting to talk to and nothing to do-- hell, the one half-decent club in the area had fucking shut down. 

Even the trust thing was kinda dubious. If they trusted him again, why not trust him in New York?

Second on the "not fair" list was being stuck an extra day, cleaning up some _minor_ loose ends left when Agent Blake had elected to go against his advice and the Kansas Turnpike ended up down one tollbooth on I-35. Clint did not count handling angry state transit authorities high on his list of skills, but he'd also seen Agent Blake at work. 

He didn't want the entirety of Kansas suing SHIELD, even if they probably wouldn't be given standing. 

In the event, he played the fuck off his status as an Avenger, promised Fury's checkbook to an absurd extent, and was back at an empty, lonely safe house within a few hours, with too damn many memories and nothing to do for the rest of the day.

Clint'd settled into his down-time routine with a sigh. Boots off, vest off, beer and remote in hand, feet up, laptop on, Phil Pheed up on his screen. He'd watched the feed out of the corner of one eye as he ran down the list of locally available ballgames on the tv. That, a pizza, and a mangy dog were a normal Saturday for him these days, back in Bed-Stuy.

Of course, he wasn't in Bed-Stuy. Or Stark Tower. Or on his Starkpad laptop with its custom firewall. 

So, third but biggest on the "not fair" list was that the always-welcome sight of Phil Coulson removing his tie was likely due to the fact that Phil Coulson had found his camera and was deploying that stupid team of his right the fuck now. Depending on how close to Kansas they'd been when he'd been found out, they could already be on the ground. They'd send in Ward or May, everything would get really fucking awkward, and he really ought to be gone when they got here.

It'd be even worse if Skye was with them, given that he'd just asked her to stop tracking him. He hoped to hell she'd erased that as quickly as possible, because if Phil ever got hold of that particular bit of information-- well.

It was one thing to cause your own downfall; he wasn't about to cause hers as well.

But if he was lucky, no one was causing anyone's downfall, because he was all packed up, including the goddamned leaky laptop, and he was going to waltz casually out the front door, and--

"Hello, 'Ronin,'" Phil’s chest said. "I think we should talk."

“Um,” Clint managed after a moment. He blinked and gave his head a quick shake to free himself from the daze he’d fallen into at the accidental sight of a whole three buttons’ worth of Coulson chest. People ought to be protected from things like that. There ought to be treaties against it-- something in the Geneva Convention, maybe.

And then he realized what the buttons meant.

“Fuck. You’re here to interrogate me, aren’t you?” 

In answer, Phil held out his hand, and Clint saw the tie fall away to reveal a piece of technology no bigger than a tie-pin. Clint sighed and squeezed his eyes shut long enough to manage a faint:

“Busted. Okay, boss, how are we handling this?”

Phil raised an eyebrow and continued staring at him.

“I mean, what are you going to do with me? Where’re Ward and May? Covering the back entrance?”

“Don’t be absurd, Barton. I’m better at losing my own team than that. They know where the feed is coming from, but I haven’t told them I recognized the owner as Ronin and Ronin as you-- yet. We have almost exactly no time before they get here, so right now I need you to give me whatever device you had this transmitting to, and then come with me.”

Clint handed the laptop over with a sigh. Phil looked it over.

“At least you had the sense not to do this on a standard SHIELD-issue device,” he grumbled. He was already halfway off the horrible bleached porch, and Clint leapt the steps to catch up with him, duffel and bow case thumping awkwardly on his back.

“Ugh, you kidding me? Can’t get decent porn to stream on those damn things. Your neck’s the best thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here-- at least since you dropped that damn tie over the proceedings.” Phil skidded to a stop so suddenly that Clint smacked into his back.

“Are you-- Clint, this is _not_ an appropriate time for flirting.” He half-turned back to Clint, and the _look_ he shot was so outraged that a lesser man would have burst into flames on the spot. Clint nearly did himself, but it was a very localized flame. He couldn’t help it; Phil without his cool Agent exterior did things to him. Every time. Even the hilariously inappropriate ones, like this one right here.

“Should have gone with two buttons instead of three then, boss,” he said, deliberately light. Phil gave a little shudder and started for Lola, wrenching the door open and pointing. Clint made sure to brush himself right up against Phil’s chest as he slid into the seat, so close their lips nearly touched. He felt light and charged suddenly, like a balloon being rubbed against a dryer sheet. Phil’s eyes widened, then he jerked back and slammed the door shut.

“Please refrain for once, Barton,” he snapped. He didn’t bother opening the driver’s side door, he just tossed the laptop in the bed of a passing pickup truck and vaulted over the side into the bucket seat. 

Clint snorted as they pulled away from the curb.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were her teammates, but on occasion they still looked to her like they came out of her worst dystopian daydreams, and never more than now.
> 
> ***
> 
> And in his office-- had he been walking through phantom trails of Clint all this time? Had Clint lounged on his couch-- just for a second, just testing-- the way he did in Phil’s thoughts?

"Turn here-- no, turn!" 

Agent Ward spun around in the passenger seat, muttering as they zipped through the intersection. They left behind an unremarkable landscape of trees, houses, and one low brick building-- probably a dentist’s office. A rusted pick-up truck screeched to a halt as they flew by. Its abrupt stop sent bits of chrome, formica, and avocado carpeting flying out of the open bed to fall around it like spores from a dandelion.

"Agent Ward," Melinda May said, voice remarkably even, "I'm the pilot here."

"I just-- woah!" 

She wrenched the wheel and took them over a curb as she turned -- at speed -- onto another street, nearly identical to the first, right down to the lone commercial brick building. Skye’s tablet flew out of her hands and she fumbled the catch as it came back down, yelping her distress. 

Ward glanced back at her, raising one patented Agent Eyebrow.

She locked her gaze on the tablet. 

"Oh, fuck," she said, "signal's switched again. I've lost it." And this time, she hadn't even had to accidentally-on-purpose lose it; it was truly not there. 

She wasn’t sure whether to attribute the sense of relief to losing the feed, or to not having to "lose" the feed. Skye was going to make sure they got to their destination, she really was. Just... not as fast as they maybe could have. She was only fooling herself, and she knew it, which made it even stupider. 

"Fitz!" Ward snapped over the comm line. "Can you recover it?"

"Working on it, working on it, already working on it," Fitz babbled in her earpiece. "It switches frequencies on a randomized basis. Sometimes its easier to predict the new frequency than others."

"It's all right, Fitz." May had, during the brief conversation, pulled into an alley and killed the engine behind yet another nondescript business. "I memorized the coordinates once you two locked on." Skye blinked up at her.

"We're here?" She asked, setting the tablet down on the seat next to her and looking around, though there was little to look at. Just your standard badly-maintained alley with more potholes than asphalt, in a depressingly common down-at-heels neighborhood-- a few houses in between some light industry. Someone ought to take a better look at the zoning regs. 

May had already slipped out of the SUV and was releasing a handgun from its holster. Ward was unfolding his tall self from the passenger seat and chambering a round in his own weapon. 

They were her teammates, but on occasion they still looked to her like they came out of her worst dystopian daydreams, and never more than now. SHIELD had been the enemy for too long for all her old reflexes to have faded entirely. (For one night, after the visit to the Hub, her nightmares had refined to men in black suits and striped ties, each interchangeable with the next. The next day Himself had smiled at her blearily over morning coffee and the effect had faded; she was always going to associate suits with him now, and he was the opposite of interchangeable.)

Skye slipped up behind Ward, setting her face and trying to out-stern him when he glared back at her, then at the SUV.

May ignored them both and slunk towards the chain link fence surrounding an astonishingly ugly little white house. Ward watched her, turned back to Skye, and pointed. Downwards. 

"Fine, fine, I'll stay," Skye grumbled at him, and leaned against the SUV with as much nonchalance as she could possibly feign.

To her shock, his face softened for half a moment and quirked upwards in apology before he turned. She hadn't known she'd miss those little lapses in his Agent Pout until they'd vanished in the wake of the Miles Affair, and their return was still too new to take for granted. That could be the last one she got, and it twisted her insides. 

____

“Now would be a damn good time to start talking, Clint,” Phil growled as he switched into the left lane to pass a Winnebago going about 45 mph on the freeway. He very carefully did not look over at the man in the bucket seat next to him. The man who had bugged his Bus-- _his_ Bus-- and very nearly compromised them both. The man who currently had his long, gorgeous hands curled into each other and stuffed down between his thighs like some kind of bashful ‘50s teen, making his frankly ridiculous shoulders pop even more.

“I, um… where do you want me to start?” 

_Well, my shirt’s halfway open anyway_ \-- no. Nope. No. 

(Not yet, anyway.) 

He profoundly hoped that Clint was reading the gravel in his voice as controlled anger rather than helpless lust. This conversation was going to be hard enough already without him realizing that Phil had been half-erect approximately since he’d seen Clint’s open-mouthed blown-pupiled reaction to having him on the doorstep. He'd have put it down to too long with just his hand for company, but the only person he'd be fooling was himself-- if even that. Clint had only ever had to look at him that way to derail Phil's train of thought, but he was damned if he let himself be derailed before he had some answers.

“The beginning is usually a good place,” he gritted out.

“Well, you were dead, sir--” 

And, no. The beginning was, in this case, not a good place to start. It was a bad place. A terrible place. The worst. Now Phil was torn between stopping Lola in the middle of I-135 to throw Clint down and strangle him for spying on him, ravish him for just being Clint, or hold him tight and apologize helplessly. 

Instead, he put his foot down more firmly on the accelerator, and said

“I think we can skip that bit, and start with when you planted a bug on my Bus. When were you even on my Bus, Barton?” 

And in his office-- had he been walking through phantom trails of Clint all this time? Had Clint lounged on his couch-- just for a second, just testing-- the way he did in Phil’s thoughts? He shifted in the bucket seat at the mental image of Clint splayed out, head tilted over one arm, smiling up at him the way he used to on the couch in Phil’s old SHIELD office.

“I never was,” Clint admitted, sighing, and leaving Phil feeling unexpectedly bereft. “That was Nat. She planted it.”

“ _When_?” He left aside how Natasha Romanov had known of his continued existence, why she would help Clint, and how she had gotten away with it, when he’d been so certain that Fitz’s little dwarf bot did twice-daily countersurveillance sweeps. The answers to all that were self-evident: Romanov was Romanov forevermore. Clint’s hand was starting to creep across the divide between them, and now he risked a quick caress of Phil’s knee. Phil glared at the offending hand, then up at Clint, who attempted a weak smile.

“When you were grounded for repairs, after one of your teammates blew a hole in your plane at cruising altitude. Which, by the way, I would like to point out I have never _once_ done.” 

“But-- “ Phil blinked as the implications sank in, felt them twist in his gut, “you didn’t know I was alive then, Barton. I hadn’t come to you in New York yet.” 

New York. Where he’d gone, quietly terrified of how unfamiliar his own body was to him, to find the man who had been nearly as familiar with it as he was. 

With the confusion, fear, and lust of that weekend in the rearview mirror, he could finally remember; the one thing Clint had not seemed at all, sitting in the booth in their favorite diner and setting eyes on him for the first time since he’d died, was _surprised._

Since, apparently, he hadn’t been.

And oh, what a new light that weekend took on now: Clint’s lips on his, testing, tasting. His hands on Phil’s hips, then curled tight into his chest hair, reclaiming him. The barrel of Clint’s gun, as he accused Phil of being… not himself. His voice, after, as he brought Phil home and introduced him to his new life and new dog. So matter of fact, so reassuring, so much what Phil needed at that exact moment that he hadn’t realized how _prepared_ Clint had been. Why the hell hadn’t he said anything? 

Phil’s stomach sank into his shoes, remembering: Clint demanding to know who he was, fingers teasing into him as he did. Demanding to know why he’d come.

 _You never lie to me_ , Phil had said then.

And Clint had said nothing to that.

 _Why did I not know_? He’d asked. _I’m Level 7._

“Oh, I knew,” Clint muttered. Phil fought down the urge to scream at him. “We didn’t make Level 7, Nat and I, without knowing when SHIELD’s trying to bury the bodies, and how to go find them.” His fingers had tiptoed back to Phil’s knee, and were starting to trail upwards along his inner thigh, even while he kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. Phil swallowed the whimper that dragged from him and the way his hand shook on the steering wheel.

“When did you find out?”

“For certain? When Streiten cleared you for active duty.” The hand had nearly reached its destination now, and Phil grabbed it around the wrist. He intended to place it right back on Clint’s thigh, where it belonged, but somehow it got stuck as he froze in place, calling up the memory.

Oh, yes, when he came back from Tahiti.

It was a magical… Phil blinked. 

“Sir?” Clint said after a long moment, “Can you speed up a bit? Captain Rogers drives faster, and he was ninety before he heard of the interstate.” 

Clint had taken advantage of the temporary distraction to raise Phil’s hand to his mouth, and was beginning to nip at his fingertips. The sharp pain brought Phil back to himself.

“Barton, damnit, stop that. This is not the time or place.” 

“Hmmm,” Clint said, lips already trailing along the back of Phil’s knuckles. “‘Course not. The seat’s a little too cramped for me to just blow you right here. Maybe a hand job….”

Yes!

 _No,_ goddamnit, _no._ He’s trying to end the conversation. Why?

They could just pick it up again afterwards. What's one hand job in the grand scheme of--

Truck!

Phil wrenched his hand back in order to swerve quickly around the eighteen-wheeler they had somehow managed to nearly rear-end at high speed. When had he gotten that far over the speed limit, anyway?

“You were already watching SHIELD.” It wasn’t a question. Clint huffed at him, glancing out from underneath his eyelashes. 

“Only fair;” he said at last, “SHIELD had been watching me pretty fucking closely. And this was after they ran all their little tests and had me jump through all their hoops before they decided I wasn’t a continued danger to myself or others. After they finally deigned to declare me fit for duty again. Though how they figured that I don’t know, since fuck knows I wasn’t sure myself for a while. After they graciously decided not to hold a court-martial-- and let me know just how much pressure the WSC had put on them and how grateful I should be. And after all that, I get to prove my loyalty to them again by getting told jack shit and pretending I like it.” Phil turned his head long enough to see Clint waiting for his reaction, nearly smoldering, his strong, perfect arms crossed tightly against his chest. 

“They watched you, you watched them.” He knew his voice was cracking.

“More or less.”

“Using the Ronin identity. After everything that happened, that’s playing with a bonfire. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Well, hey, the old Ronin isn’t going to be using it any time soon. I think I’m going to start by nibbling your earlobe.”

“No, you’re not. And keep your goddamn seatbelt on. We’ll get into your death wish vis a vis Ronin later-- I hope it was worth it.”

“I wouldn’t have found out about you any other way. It was worth it.”

“Then,” Phil was aware even as he felt it happen that it was a tactically awful time to have his words catch in his throat, “why didn’t you come to me?” All those uneasy months spent in self-denial and guilt. He felt a finger trail along his jawline for a moment. Unnecessarily so, if he only had known. If Clint had only.... He couldn’t turn again; he’d never keep Lola under control if he was looking at Clint right now.

“When I get out of this car, I’m just gonna tear you right out of this shirt, Phil. Doesn’t matter where it is. Right in front of your whole team. Get my mouth on your neck and never let go.”

Hell, he was never going to keep control of Lola anyway. A blurred glance at the speedometer showed he was creeping up towards triple digits. Maybe he should just use the sirens and lights?

“Give me an answer, Clint.”

“Lot of other things I could be giving you instead, sir,” Clint purred, and the finger ran down below his collar and gave an experimental tug at his chest hair. “God, look at you. Nearly as red as Lola. It’s damn sexy on you, Phil. A little turned on?”

“A little enraged. For _fuck’s sake_ , get your hands off me--” before I come in my pants or throw you out of the car-- “and keep your hands to yourself, Barton. This is _not_ playtime.”

“Hey, you’re the one who’s got no tie on and _three buttons_ open. You're sending very mixed signals here, and you're doing it on purpose. Can't blame me for responding." His voice was light, teasing-- too light, too teasing, in fact. Clint playing three-card monte with the truth. What, because anything could hurt Phil worse right now? 

Could it? The conflict between the surge of heat in Phil’s groin and the ice in the pit of his stomach nearly blacked him out for half a second. 

Fuck it. He flipped on the lights and sirens.

“Clint.” Somehow, Phil managed to get the name out without shaking, but it still sounded uncomfortably like a plea to his ears. Clint sighed beside him and collapsed back into the bucket seat, curling up against the door.

“I didn’t come because I didn’t know what it meant-- if it was really you or not. And if it was, I didn’t know if doing that would get you into trouble. And I knew-- if it was you-- you’d come get me when you needed my help. If you ever did,” Clint said, so low it was nearly lost in the highway sounds as Lola sped towards the airfield. 

It could, indeed, hurt worse.

After that, it was all Phil could do to concentrate on the road long enough to get them onto the 254 interchange, speeding back towards the airport.

_____  
The dirty, patchy back yard of the house boasted little but a rusted-out swingset and a half-collapsed scalloped iron table. A collection of paint buckets, boards, and cinderblocks blocked the back path, in what could have been an accident or could have been a makeshift skateboard ramp.

This couldn't possibly be Ronin's home base. There was no damn way that the man-- if he even was a man-- was going to be found here. This was the guy behind the text strings that had guided her through several of SHIELD's more arcane security protocols, who had planted false flags all over the Rising Tide boards when Quinn threatened to out her, who had let her blather on late at night about Mr Tall Dark and (not-so) Frustrating out there. 

_This_ was the house of an extended family, with parents who worked five jobs between them and teenagers who were never home. Or the house of a serial killer, whichever.

May was up at the back door, Ward at her heels, and Skye was biting her nails, hoping that if they looked back they'd think it was entirely for their sakes'.

Which it was, in part. Because what if she'd completely misjudged the guy? What if he was less harmless than Miles the jerk? There could be booby traps-- hell explosives. (No-- not possible, she needed to stop fucking scaring herself already.)

"Please look at your damn tablet, Skye. I've got it, it's moving! Guys, get back to the SUV!" Fitz was talking so fast his voice was hardly more than a high-pitched slur of yelps and burr.

"What?" Skye shot up straight, belatedly realizing she'd shouted.

Turned out Ward could aim a glare at long-distance just as well as he could aim a sniper rifle.

They were in the SUV and driving off less than a minute later. Skye had pulled up the tablet as she buckled in, and was watching the signal move along the map.

"Fitz was able to pick up a GPS signal from the device the feed was streaming to. It’s moving now. It's going back on Waterman; not far away either." She looked up.

"The pickup," she and Ward said simultaneously, then blinked at each other. 

May cursed.

"On it," she said, peeling out of the alley fast enough to send Ward flying towards the ceiling. Skye was fairly certain he'd been smiling at her, maybe just a bit, before that happened.

____

Clint remembered very little of the trip until he was approaching the runway, where a parade of small planes was piled up behind the Bus. It ended in a Cirrus S22 with a burly guy the size of a Grizzly leaning against it, and a Cessna Skycatcher painted red, white and blue, emblazoned with “Plane Ol Ad’s (Aerial Advertising to Fit any Budget)”. The Cessna was trailing a long red banner in the dust, with the words “arry Me, Bo” just visible among the folds. Phil pulled Lola alongside a hangar at the opposite end of the airstrip from the Bus and killed the engine.

“Okay, Barton,” Phil said, unbuckling and turning to face Clint. “We’re going to go up to my office to--” Clint was really hoping the microscopic pause would end with “get my hands all over your naked body.” 

Alas.

“--finish this discussion and figure out what we can do to clean up this mess. FitzSimmons are in there, and they must not see either of us on the way through. Keep your head down and follow me.”

Clint watched Phil’s ass as he climbed out of the car. Before following, he tugged a feed cap (complimentary from Feed & Farmer’s Supply where he had briefly gone undercover as a sales rep) out of his bag and pulled it onto his head, then he rounded the back of the car with his usual grace. Phil was eyeing the assembled locals distastefully. 

“Good look on you, sir,” Clint was pleased when Phil started slightly at the sudden proximity; not enough of a twitch for anyone else to see, but a clear tell to Clint. He took another step closer, eyeing the way the open collar contrasted with the perfect line of the jacket. “Still too much clothing. Not enough sk…” He did not even try to stop himself from reaching for the open neck of Phil’s shirt.

“Dammit, Barton,” Phil snapped, but his pupils were large, and he licked his bottom lip. “Keep your mind on the mission.” One eyebrow twitched in confusion or amusement. “Nice hat.”

“So I can blend,” Clint answered with a flirty wink, smug with the victory at cutting through the legendary calm of Agent Coulson. “Gives me verisimilitude.”

Phil’s nostrils flared in a huff of near-laughter before he stalked off across the tarmac. Clint waited a few moments and then followed, opting to watch Phil’s well-suited rear rather than their path. He did look up when Phil stopped in front of a small group of spectators but was too far back to hear the quiet conversation, and, by the time he caught up to Phil, the Kansas natives -- Kansans? Kansasians? Kansadites-- had dispersed to talk to other groups.

“What’d you tell them?” Clint asked quietly, using his low volume as an excuse to lean in enough to let his breath brush the side of Phil’s neck. Clint watched goosebumps lightly pimple the skin for a moment.

“That someone in charge will arrive this evening to see about removing the plane from the too-short runway,” Phil replied with a shrug, and Clint laughed, a deep, honest laugh. Some of the tension drained out of Phil’s shoulders. “Stick close up here, Clint. FitzSimmons should both be in the Command Center, but the lab is just inside the rear bay, and the walls are all glass.”

“Sneaking in plain sight, sir?” Clint asked eagerly, and Phil’s answering smile was positively wolfish. “I like this plan already.”

____  
Okay, this wasn't what she'd expected Ronin to look like, either.

It wasn't like the internet was exactly filled with people being what they claimed to be, and some of the best hackers she'd known were the least impressive-looking (though, they did tend towards young, white, libertarian, and self-righteous and apparently she was still in the anger stage of the breakup with Miles). 

She was still fairly certain that the man who'd taken out the biggest of Hong Kong's kingpins using only a simple denial-of-service attack, or so the Tide members who'd been hacking 10 years ago said, was not actually a stout woman with thinning hair and a t-shirt showing kittens in Indian headdresses.

Well, the backsides of kittens in Indian headdresses. A siamese, an orange tabby, and a mackerel tabby. To be specific.

And her husband, or brother (or hell, even father, it was hard to tell)-- _whoever_ the guy was with the curly hair, coke-bottle glasses, and a large compression bandage going up one unfortunately-bare leg, he was no-one’s vision of Ronin either.

Apparently, Ward was at a loss as well, and May was… leaving him to deal with it while she searched the pick-up.

“It’s about time somebody did something about those gutters,” the man said, in a reedy voice. 

“What?” 

Skye was going to memorize that face of his, yes she was, she was going to memorize the fuck out of it and spend hours perfecting it in front of the mirror, and she would never lose a Ward-alike contest with the Braintwins again.

“You’re from the landlord, right? The gutters, they’re clogged, and I can’t get up on a ladder right now, not with this leg, and Ma’s not supposed to be climbing on account of the lumbago.”

“I, but,we’re not… sir, why do you think we’re from the landlord?”

The woman in the t-shirt with unpleasantly racist undertones sniffed and looked Ward up and down, settling about his pectoral area. (Naturally.)

“Same car everyone from your company drives.” She said as she flapped a hand at the eagle insignia emblazoned on the SUV. “Our place and the place next door.” 

“The white house?” Skye said, and received a judicious nod in return.

May came around the pickup at that moment, the remains of a laptop, now thoroughly covered in some kind of slimy mess, dangling from one hand.  
“Now, see,” said the man, “we were just taking all that stuff back there to the dump, when we had to stop real quick. It all got jumbled up and half of it fell out. That musta got dumped in the fish guts bucket left from yesterday's trip, yeah?”

Yeah.

“I’ll, ah, get an evidence bag from the car,” Skye muttered, and beat a hasty retreat.

May joined her as she turned around, unceremoniously dropping the laptop into the open plastic bag.

“We’ll take that for later. Fitz says he’s got another trace.”

“He-- what?” 

“Another trace. There’s another device that was active in the same location as the original when it blanked. It's registered to the same user, too. It's heading south currently, just switched onto I-35. We’re moving out.”

Move out they did, with Skye scrambling to bring the new signal up on her tablet.

She shuffled the “landlord” comment away for later, but really: Least. Secret. Covert. Agency. Ever.

_____

They stepped out of the late afternoon sun into the shadow of the Bus’ enormous wings, and silently slipped halfway up the cargo ramp. Phil signed for Clint to wait and inched barely higher, edging to one side. Clint stilled, appreciating the unhindered view of Phil’s shoulders and rear, until he received the go-ahead, and then he hurried up the ramp and to the spiral stairs that Phil was already climbing.

“It will get a little trickier through the next door,” Phil told him quietly, pausing to point when they were halfway up. “You stay directly on my six unless I tell you not to. Copy?”

“Copy, sir,” Clint said with a short, sharp nod. “And may I say that sticking close to your ‘six’ is exactly where I want to be right now. I still mean it about tearing you out of that shirt and getting my mouth on your neck, Phil.”

“Shut up, Barton,” Phil retorted, but Clint was pleased to notice the earlier flush was coloring the bridge of his nose as well as his ears and the back of his neck. God, how he wanted to taste. Phil knew Clint had a serious competence kink, and there he was, being all in charge and sexy. This had to be foreplay. Damned three buttons….

“Through this door,” Phil continued, “we will be out of sight. Beyond the next door is the lounge, which will provide some cover. Unfortunately, FitzSimmons should be in the command center, just beyond the lounge.”

“Little room, lots of monitors?” Clint asked. He scrunched up his face as he tried to remember the original layout of the airborne mobile command stations.

“Not anymore,” Phil said in a grim voice. “The top two-thirds of the walls are glass, so we’ll have to be very, very careful. Stay low, stay near me, and stay quiet. Basically, fight your instincts and do what I do.”

Clint reached out to snag the cuff of Phil’s jacket. “I can’t promise how long I’ll be willing to fight some of my instincts, sir,” he said, leaning into Phil’s personal space. “But my sneaking instincts are firmly intact.”

“Not the time, Clint,” Phil told him, strained, refusing to meet Clint’s eyes. He tugged his arm free and elbowed Clint off of his side. “We have a few things we need to discuss in a secure location.” 

Clint winced. Maybe he had read the buttons wrong. Then Phil’s hand was on the latch for the door, and he glanced over his shoulder at Clint, and there was no mistaking the heat in Phil’s look. Maybe “discuss” was another Phil Euphemism like “paperwork” or “in the office late” or even “Dammit, Clint, I don’t have time for this, so you’d better make it quick.”

They slid through the door, Phil in the lead, and ducked to the floor behind the partial wall just inside. Phil shot Clint a look that clearly said, “Wait” before he slid silently across to the far wall of the plane. Clint watched him, admiring the flex of Phil’s shoulders under the crisp white shirt as he rolled neatly to end behind the bar, body still, eyes alert. After a moment, he gave a nod, and Clint followed the line, rolling to come up against Phil’s side behind the bar.

They settled into the narrow gap behind the bar, shoulders and thighs brushing as they sat with their backs against the outside wall of the plane and listened to two voices babbling something that reminded Clint vaguely of Banner and Stark. He heard a few words he couldn’t possibly pronounce, let alone spell, and tried to tune it out, focusing instead on the solid, not-quite-pressure of Phil’s body alongside his own. 

“FitzSimmons,” Phil breathed against his ear. “They’re amazing at what they do, but they’re not field agents, so we should be able to get around them.”

Clint closed his eyes for a moment at the warmth of Phil’s breath and the shiver of pleasure from Phil’s lips barely grazing the shell of his ear on the R in “around.”

“Jemma, are you sure you have all your biology subjects put away?” a young male voice asked. 

“Of course,” a woman answered. “You know the rat cages are secure.”

“And how do I know that you haven’t done something to make the rats smart enough to get out of there?”

“Really, Fitz,” the girl said on a sigh. “You have the strangest ideas. They come smart enough to get out of most cages. I have made sure my cages are smarter than my rats.”

“Just don’t want them getting into my snacks. Speaking of… Come with me to make some popcorn?”

“Need company to protect you from the scary rodents?”

The voices began to move away, still arguing over the relative intelligence of rats. Clint turned to Phil, who grinned at him and gestured with his chin. Staying low, they both edged out of cover, and Clint followed straight into the darker confines of the Command Center. Clint didn’t have time to look around as Phil led him directly out the opposite door into the much brighter crew quarters area. Coulson jerked his head at a partially open door and both men slid into the tiny space beside the bunk.

“Yours, sir?” Clint asked, leaning close enough to Phil to smell the sweat and gunpowder scent rising off his neck. “Maybe we should just slide that shut the rest of the way and…”

“Actually this one belongs to the hacker I picked up,” Phil replied, shifting to watch through the gap in the door. He edged away from Clint’s breath on his ear, and Clint followed to press against Phil’s back. The corners of Phil’s mouth tightened slightly, but he did not move again. “When Fitz has his snack, they’ll head back into the command center. We can move out of here and up the stairs if we’re quiet.”

“How many times have you planned this assault on your own transport, Phil?” Clint asked, leaning in until his lips brushed along the hair at the base of Phil’s neck. Phil licked his lips.

“There they go, Barton,” he whispered, his voice as steady as ever, as FitzSimmons went by, still arguing about rodents, but followed now by the smell of butter. “Time to move.”

Clint had only a moment to realize he had wasted a chance to look around his contact’s quarters, but he shrugged it off and got ready to move. Phil slid the door open, made a quick series of hand gestures, and both men darted across the brightly lit, open space, bodies low and movements controlled. Clint decided to show off and slithered ahead to be the first up the stairs. He leaped for the railing, got a knee up on a step, and reached down to offer Phil a hand. Not that he needed it. Of course. Phil gave the hand a clearly unimpressed look and jumped for a handhold beside Clint’s. He pulled himself up easily.

“Move,” Phil hissed as he swung himself over the railing and led the way to the command deck. 

Clint couldn’t resist trailing one hand down Phil’s shoulder when they stopped outside a locked door, but he pulled back as his hand was shrugged off. 

“Talk first,” Phil snapped as he unlocked the door and stepped into his office.

“And after that?” Clint asked quietly as he followed.

“Depends on the talk.”

The door slid shut behind them, and the locked clicked loudly as it engaged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In tomorrow's episode of Spy vs. Spy... 
> 
> No, wait
> 
> In tomorrow's chapter of Firewall, The Short Bus finds another way to trace "Ronin," we see the aftereffects of ignoring the security advice of the World's Greatest Marksman, and Clint and Phil finally talk. Ish.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was nothing to do but follow the little bleeps, the dashed lines on the highway, the mile markers as they rolled past, and worry about what Ronin would say about her when they caught him.
> 
> ***
> 
> “So you didn’t trust me?” Phil asked, the warmth he’d felt since Clint had opened the door being swallowed by cold disappointment. “Me, Clint. You didn’t trust me enough to give me the truth. The _one thing_ I asked you for that weekend. The thing I needed from you the most.”

“All right, sir, we copy that,” Ward sighed, and flung an arm over the back of his seat as he turned to talk to Skye.

“Do you still have a lock on the signal for the new device?” he asked. She nodded, dumbly, still a little relieved.

A.C. had been out of communication for long enough that she had been starting to dream up visions of all the ways things could have gone wrong:

He could have captured Ronin himself. Could be interrogating him even now in the little beehive cell. Or Ronin could have captured him, she supposed, though she wasn’t sure what he would have _done_ with a captive SHIELD agent anyway. Or he could just be keeping secrets again. Or there could have been a car accident, or some kind of alien invasion, or, or… any number of things. Because shit did happen, okay? Bad shit. Unexpected shit. Even to really _really_ badass secret agents. 

Just when she’d really gotten herself worked up into a good old-fashioned panic, heart beating fast and brain spinning and everything, he’d called.

He'd sounded just as fucking calm as always over the comms-- nothing to worry about, she told her heart as it started to gear down. He's just doing his Level Eight thing. The ways of A.C. occasionally passeth understanding.

He was making contact with a local SHIELD informant to find out if there'd been any recent activity in the area. Going to be out of communication a while longer. Keep following that signal, guys, you’re doing great. 

“I’ve still got it,” she said, watching the coordinates flip in a corner of her screen while a little blip moved on the map. “It’s heading south on the Turnpike-- ulp!” May was navigating a particularly tangled set of exits, and several pieces of equipment (and a couple of guns) came unseated as she took the last curve and sped up. 

“How far ahead of us?”

“At least ten miles. And not going slow, either. Can we--” Skye shut her mouth on “catch it,” and thought she caught a lightening in May’s eyes, meeting hers through the rear-view mirror.

Maybe she was starting to get the hang of this team thing, after all.

In her hands, the tablet bleeped and winked, as her dirty secret sped before them towards the Oklahoma border.

____

 

After checking in with his team, Phil swung his attention back to Clint and watched as he shrunk in on himself a bit. Sighing, Phil slipped the com out of his ear and dropped it into the desk drawer that deactivated the tracking on the device.

“So it’s time to talk, Clint,” he said, slipping his jacket off and swinging it around the back of his chair. He sat, gesturing at the chair across from him for Clint to do the same. Maybe he would be safe with a desk between them. Clint’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. Probably not. “Why didn’t you tell me about the camera while I was in New York?”

Clint twisted his hands together in his lap, and Phil forced himself to stay in his chair, to not reach out and drag Clint across the desk into his lap. 

“I… I just…” Clint began. He sighed and stopped. His eyes were hidden in the shadows under the bill of the feed cap.

“Will you at least take that damn hat off?” Phil snapped. Clint tipped his head up enough to let his eyes sparkle at Phil from under the bill, and Phil decided he’d had enough. Without thinking, he snatched a binder clip off of his desk, tucked it between his fingers, and let it fly with a flick of his wrist. He grinned at Clint’s expression of delighted surprise as the hat flew backward and tumbled to the floor.

“Damn, Phil!” he said. “You remembered!”

“I’ve been practicing,” Phil said calmly, trying to keep the grin off his face. He could tell by the smirk he received that he was failing miserably at looking modest . And then they both remembered why they were there and sobered, staring at each other in silence. Clint shifted uncomfortably in the chair and looked around the room.

“Nice office,” he said, and Phil could practically see him memorizing the shelves and their contents. “You have room for your whole Early Days of Spy Versus Spy collection. And a couch. Is it as comfy as the one in your old office?”

“I don’t know,” Phil answered. “Haven’t had an archer crashed on it for hours at time. As far as I’m aware, at least.”

“Phil,” Clint said, raising a hand placatingly. “I told you I hadn’t been here. If I’d come before, I would have…”

“Why, Clint? Just tell me why.” And Phil’s voice absolutely did not crack. He hoped. “Why didn’t you tell me about the camera?”

Clint picked at a scab on his wrist, eyes focused on the way his nail worried the small place. “Still wasn’t sure you were all you. That you were the only one in your head or… Hell, Phil, I still don’t know what they did to you, and I still couldn’t be positive you were just you.”

“So you didn’t trust me?” Phil asked, the warmth he’d felt since Clint had opened the door being swallowed by cold disappointment. “Me, Clint. You didn’t trust me enough to give me the truth. The _one thing_ I asked you for that weekend. The thing I needed from you the most.”

“Phil,” Clint said, looking up with something that could have been tears shining in his eyes. “Phil, of course I trust you. You’re one of the only people I do trust. But I didn’t trust them, SHIELD. I don’t trust them. How did they bring you back, and what did they do to you? I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t doing something through you to compromise me. I… haven’t felt grounded, Phil. Not since Loki. Not since you died. And I don’t know if SHIELD has my back anymore.”

The hurt in Clint’s voice, instead of soothing Phil’s anger, instead of igniting his sympathy, kicked the betrayal he was feeling into the next gear.

“Goddamn it, Clint!” Phil was on his feet and near-shouting. “You think I don’t know that? You think that this has been easy for me? Knowing you didn’t know I was alive? Knowing you weren’t ever supposed to know! Staying away from you! None of that has been easy. I knew you were hurting. It was weeks after I woke up before someone thought to tell me you had been recovered. It took me months before I found the courage to go to you. It took me being frightened, utterly lost, before I was brave enough to admit I needed you- needed you enough to risk both of us, both our careers, before I could go to you.” Phil slammed both hands on his desk and leaned forward. He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t trust what they were telling me about what I went through. That’s why I went to you. And you _lied_ to me. And I still can’t know if you lied to me about anything else. If you’re still lying to me. I don’t know what to believe anymore.” His voice cracked. Well, there was something else the new Phil apparently did: started choking up in the middle of a tirade. That was a change he could live without.

“Shut up, Phil,” Clint hissed. He was on his feet now, too, and the spark of violence in his body language bit through the coldness in Phil’s chest. The flex of Those Shoulders in fight-or-flight mode suddenly made Phil want to taste. No. This was an argument. No licking. “You shut the fuck up, sir.” Clint spat the honorific, and Phil’s temper kicked up again.

“No, Specialist.” Phil cut him off, his control was back and so was his perfectly even Agent voice. “I don’t think I will shut up. If you saw the files that said I was alive, if you’ve seen anything at all on that surveillance feed, then you know exactly what I’ve been going through. I can understand you not telling me about it before I went to New York, since you weren’t supposed to know. I can understand you not telling me about it since, as communication would have been problematic. But I was there, Clint. I was naked, on your bed, your mouth and hands on me, and I needed you to believe in me, to give me the truth. If that wasn’t you trusting me, then what the fuck was it supposed to be?”

“I wanted it to be about you learning to trust yourself, Phil,” Clint said softly, dropping back into his chair and putting his hand over his face. “I could see that you were losing your faith in SHIELD, and, frankly, it’s about damned time. But I could see that you had lost your faith in yourself, and that… No, Phil. You have to… You’re...” Clint looked up, clearly giving up on words, his eyes begging Phil to understand.

Phil opened his mouth to say something else, something sharp and hurtful, something angry and cutting. But he knew that look. Clint trusted Phil to fix things and was lost when he found out that Phil didn’t know how. Goddamned needy archers with their arms and their friendship and their blind faith in those they cared about. No words came out, so he gave up and leaned across the desk to grab Clint’s wrist. One giant heave, and Clint was on his feet, off-balance, leaning over the desk and falling into Phil’s mouth as their lips slammed together roughly.

Clint groaned and kissed back hard, his hands instantly reaching for the gaping vee of the shirt at the base of Phil’s throat. Phil felt the rest of the buttons give as Clint yanked, and found that, for once, he really didn’t care about his clothing; the rough palms against his ribs more than made up for one shirt. He reached down to get a better grip on Clint’s hips and dragged him on top of the desk. Clint made another helpless sound and went with the pull, scrambling up onto his knees.

“Fuck, Phil,” his voice was a broken rasp against Phil’s neck. “Need you. Missed you. Oh fuck, I’ve missed you.”

Phil wanted to reply in kind, but all that he managed was a rough growl as he pulled Clint to the edge of the desk to get better access to his assets. Clint whimpered when Phil’s teeth found his neck. The sound went straight to Phil’s dick, so he bit down harder.

Clint arched into Phil’s chest with a shout. 

“This room is reasonably soundproofed,” Phil said against Clint’s ear, smug with the lack of a quaver in his voice. “But I’m not sure that kind of noise can be muffled by much of anything. If you can’t keep it down, I will gag you.”

“No you won’t, sir,” Clint replied tartly. “If you did, I couldn’t do this.” Phil’s hands spasmed against Clint’s back as Clint ducked his head to bite a bruise into the top of Phil’s right pectoral. “Or this.” The seams of Clint’s t-shirt crackled when Phil’s hands jerked again with Clint’s tongue pressing warmly against his left nipple. 

“Clint,” Phil warned, pulling back slightly, panting. “We should finish discussing... this. Sex isn’t going to fix it this time.”

“Could let it, baby,” Clint whispered, leaning towards Phil’s mouth. Phil sighed blissfully and closed his eyes as Clint’s fingertips brushed through the hair on his chest, stroking up to his shoulders and back down to trace the lines of the scars below his heart. “Being with you always fixes things. You could show me your displeasure, rather than just telling me. Let me make it better?”

“Your lines are still lame.” Phil shook his head and pursed his lips slightly. He tugged on Clint’s hips, pulling to let him unfold his legs and sit on the edge of the desk. Phil crowded between hard-muscled thighs, and Clint wriggled happily against him before he wrapped his legs around Phil’s hips.

“You still can’t get enough of my lines.” Clint’s calloused fingertips brushed the sensitive place behind Phil’s ear. “Or of me.”

“Proof of lameness.” Phil cut off any further cheesy lines by capturing Clint’s mouth with his own, leaving it only long enough to pull off Clint’s t-shirt, pressing skin to skin. This was a language he knew Clint would understand.

_____

“Holy fuck-- what did _that_?” Skye exclaimed, twisting in her seat to ogle the burnt-out remains of a tollbooth.

At some time in the very recent past, the roof of the booth had come down and collapsed over the lanes themselves, and something had charred it to a crisp. The electronic pass lane was still open, mostly, and May had maneuvered them into it without a backwards glance.

Skye wasn’t sure whether SHIELD had K-TAGs for their vehicles, or whether Kansas just billed them or ignored their presence entirely (passes? We don’t need no stinkin’ passes), but perhaps it wouldn’t matter.

The entire rest area looked like it had been stomped on by a particularly malicious giant. Possibly a giant child, given that 18-wheelers were scattered about like abandoned toys. The exploded shell of an oil tanker truck told her how the tollbooth had gotten incinerated.

“Man,” she breathed out.

“It’s impressive,” Ward acknowledged, watching it with her.

“What could have done _that_?”

“Tornado?” 

“There hasn’t been a storm in the area for weeks, my dear S.O.”

“Skye-- if you’ve lost the trace because you went onto Weather Underground--”

“No, no, it’s still here. Dude’s still driving south. Still fast. Nothing new to report. Sir.”

Ward huffed and turned forward.

“It was probably a microburst,” he said a moment later, as they passed the remains of two black SUVs, disembowelled and scattered for yards. One front door had come to rest against the remains of a coin bucket. Underneath the burns and scratches, the profile of an eagle lurked.

“Microburst,” Skye said, hoping her tone conveyed the proper amount of “you’re going with that, huh?”

“Microburst.” There were dark stains in patches along the highway as they sped away. The rusty ones were worrisome because she could imagine what caused them, but the acid green ones were honestly worse for being inexplicable. 

“Okay, then. Need to know, I get it. I don’t need to.” Ward’s back slumped just a little, and May’s gaze drifted to her in the mirror for a millisecond. Oh. So maybe The System thought they didn’t need to know, either? She sighed. “I wonder who got stuck with the cover-up for this shit, is all.” 

“Skye-- just get back to the damn trace.”

____

Clint was nearly sobbing with relief by the time he was lying on his back across the desk, legs wrapped tightly around Phil’s waist, their hips moving together in a slow but steady roll as their lips and teeth slipped and caught. He had been so certain that this was where the day was leading when Phil appeared on the porch of the boring little white house with so much of his gloriously furred chest exposed. But then Phil had been so angry in Lola, when they first entered the office, Clint was sure that was it: the end of his employment with SHIELD, or worse, the end of his-- attachment to? Arrangement with? Relation-- thing with Phil. This didn’t feel like forgiveness, but the kisses had the taste of understanding.

“Phil,” Clint gasped, trying to get words out in spite of his shortness of breath and his unwillingness to take his mouth from Phil’s. “I’m sorry.” It was important to say it. What he planned to follow the apology with was momentarily lost when Phil’s wicked tongue found Clint’s right nipple. “Fuck! Yes, harder! I… I didn’t mean for you to find out this way. Wanted to tell... Nngh! TeethgoddamnitPhilgivemeyourfuckingteeth!”

There was a hum of pleasure or desperation from one of them, and Clint bucked as Phil complied with the request for biting, fingers digging hard into Clint’s back to pull him tighter to Phil’s mouth. Clint knew he would have bruises for a week. Excellent!

“Did you ever plan on telling me?” Clint could barely hear Phil’s whisper over the blood thundering in his ears. The teeth moved to Clint’s other nipple, and he nearly forgot to answer. Phil pulled back to ask again, lips still brushing Clint’s chest, but his hips stilling. “Did you ever…”

“Yes, fuck, Phil,” Clint snapped, pulling harder with his thighs in an attempt to create some friction where he most needed it. “Of course. When I got a chance, in person, after I was damn sure that SHIELD wasn’t watching me watch you. And when I was sure you were you and not something SHIELD set up to watch them while you watched me watching you.”

Phil abruptly stood, removing the perfection of his hot mouth from Clint’s burning flesh. For one moment, Clint thought his skin was going to walk off to chase that mouth. He took a deep breath to center himself and was able to focus on Phil’s serious eyes.

“You didn’t trust me before?”

“I trust you, Phil Coulson, with my life,” Clint cut him off, tightening his abs to sit up enough to reach for Phil’s shoulders. He pulled until they were breathing the same air. “I trust you with Nat’s life. But, babe, I don’t trust SHIELD or anyone else not to use you to break me.”

Phil went soft around the edges in a way Clint had never seen outside of a post-orgasmic haze. “Whatever happened, Clint, whatever they did to me, however they did it, I will not let them use it against you. They can have this body, this mind, all of it, but they won’t ever get to you.”

“Y’ swear?” Clint asked, already knowing the answer. It wasn’t a promise even Phil could keep. “And you forgive me?”

“Of course, Clint.” Phil rubbed the tips of their noses together before moving with aching slowness toward Clint’s mouth. “Doesn’t mean I’m over it yet. But I can think of a few ways for you to make it up to me.”

"Can I have an example?" Clint was back to being boneless across the desk. “Maybe show me?”

“We use our words, Clint,” Phil said, pulling away abruptly. The curl to the corner of his mouth told Clint that he saw the irony in that statement, too; they’d always done better at showing meaning with their bodies than their mouths.

Clint scrunched his nose and made grabby hands, but Phil backed away.

“I have a bathroom with a shower right outside the door,” Phil said mildly, and Clint felt his heart rate kick up another notch. “Fairly little. But it’s private. Biometric lock on the door.”

“How little are we talking, sir?” Clint asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Think we’ll both fit?”

“Maybe if we stay very close,” Phil answered. Clint admired the flex of Phil’s shoulders while he unbuttoned his cuffs and shrugged out of his ruined shirt. “If you can make yourself small and contrite.”

“I’m supposed to be naked and wet around you, and you want _small_?” Clint said. He tried to keep his voice indignant, but he was sure his grin was giving him away. “Is this some kinky fantasy you’ve been harboring since getting the plane, sir? Hot younger man in your shower offering sexual favors and calling you ‘boss?’”

“Only since Bed-Stuy. We never did get the joint shower you kept offering.”

Clint let his head flop back on the desk and closed his eyes to the blue sky visible through the skylight. “Sorry, ‘bout that, too, sir.” 

“Don’t be sorry, Clint,” said Phil. He grabbed Clint’s arm to pull him up. “Be proactive.”

“I’d rather be naked,” Clint said, leaning into Phil to initiate another kiss. “But that’s kind of the same thing.”

\-------

There was nothing better at eroding all sense of time than endless, changeless miles of treeless farmland and prairie zipping by outside the windows, and broad stripes of asphalt and yellow lines disappearing beneath tires. The only method of measurement Skye cared about was the way May crept, bit by bit, closer to whatever it was-- whoever it was-- they were pursuing.

There was nothing to do but follow the little bleeps, the dashed lines on the highway, the mile markers as they rolled past, and worry about what Ronin would say about her when they caught him.

Oh, they were gonna catch him, no doubt. She was riding in a secret spy vehicle with the Cavalry and Agent Grant Ward himself, and it would have been as absurd to imagine they wouldn’t catch him, as it would have been to imagine she could have ever prevented them from getting to this point.

And then… what? Would he pretend he didn’t know her, or would he sell her out? Would he turn out to be as harmless as the Clueless Racist Cat Butt lady, or would he be what the rumors around the hacktivist community whispered that he was: a real life fuckin’ ninja, online and off? 

More importantly, how the hell had he gotten a bug onto the Bus? She’d been present when Fitz’s little anti-bugging dwarf bot Doc had scoured the newly-repaired Bus and terminated seventeen assorted spy devices with prejudice (and a wee laser). Watching as Doc did its daily rounds was part of her after-breakfast routine, along with a second cup of coffee (or sludge, if A.C. had gotten to the coffee maker first in the morning). 

It certainly argued against Mrs.Three Fluffy Asses, unless she’d had an ally other than her husband, and strongly in favor of the ninja theory.

Ronin was seeming far less avuncular and far more dangerous, lately. 

Especially since he’d clearly been in close proximity to something SHIELD wanted or owned, back there in Wichita.

But… but he’d had more than enough time to betray her before now. He had _way_ more than enough on her to get SHIELD to strand her in the middle of a desert, or stuff her in some kind of high-tech cell or, well, simply reconfigure the tracking bracelet to make her an electronics-killer for the foreseeable future, like Miles.

Assuming he and SHIELD were sympatico. Alternatively… alternatively, she’d been aiding someone who was a hell of a lot more invested in taking SHIELD-- not just SHIELD, _her team_ \-- down than she’d previously thought. 

No. Not just her team. Her _Coulson_. The man who’d seen something in her worth taking a risk on. Who kept on seeing it, despite her fuck-ups.

 _Never assume he doesn’t know,_ Ronin had told her once. She’d asked how he’d known.

_Things I learned the hard way that you shouldn't._

She’d honestly thought he was talking out of his ass. He did that sometimes, fucked with her just for the hell of it, just to make her laugh. Dropped dubious conspiracies like C-list celebrity names; SWORD and false flag operations and HAARP and alphabet fucking soup. 

He’d warned her off, and May was rapidly gaining on him.

_____

Phil had been overestimating the size of the shower. 

“Babe,” Clint grunted, muffled. “If I get any closer to this shower, this will quickly become a three-way with your Bus.”

Phil ran his lips along the wet skin of Clint’s shoulder and hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. His hands were clutching Clint’s hips, probably leaving bruises with the strength of his grip. The flex of archery-toned back muscles against Phil’s chest was electric, and the cold walls of the shower that brushed his arms, his back, his hips was the perfect counterpoint to the hot water pouring over both of them. Clint dropped his head back onto Phil’s shoulder, and Phil buried his face in the curve of Clint’s neck. 

“In spite of the circumstances, I’m glad to see you again,” Phil said gently. Clint melted against his front, and the slide of wet glutes across Phil’s hips woke up warm feelings in more places than just his chest.

“Turn around,” Phil ordered, pressing himself to the wall at his back as far as he could to allow Clint’s massive shoulders room to twist. The maneuver nearly upset them both, and Phil grabbed Clint around the waist while Clint braced both hands against the walls to steady them. They exchanged one brief, brushing kiss before Clint pulled away a fraction to throw a heated look up and then back down the length of Phil’s body.

“Wish I could get on my knees in here, babe,” Clint said, and Phil felt himself blush a bit with the intensity of Clint’s downward gaze. “God, your chest, your hips, your…” He trailed off and licked his lips. Another wave of warmth added to Phil’s erection.

“As that is genuinely not a possibility right now,” Phil said, lifting Clint’s chin with one finger, “I have another idea.”

Phil slid both hands down Clint’s wet back, knuckles brushing the tile, to wrap his hands around Clint’s thighs. Clint tensed against him, and then folded as Phil lifted him, pressing in harder to pin Clint’s shoulders to the wall, shifting until he was supporting Clint with one hand, bracing their combined weight with the other.

“What the hell!” Clint choked, quickly wrapping both legs around Phil’s hips and both arms around Phil’s shoulders. “Since when could you pick me up unassisted?”

“Since… huh… that’s… that’s new,” Phil said. He thought a moment, trying to figure out exactly what had made him think he could lift Clint. Certainly there had been missions in the past where he had thrown an unconscious or injured archer over his shoulder to drag him out of a warehouse or prison. Clint had climbed an already-braced Phil a few times, either to look through a window or over a wall, and a few times to engage in intercourse in unlikely locations. But, no, Phil had never been able to just… pick him up with nothing but his arms and back. 

The shower was suddenly much too close and much too hot.

“I need to get out of here, Clint,” Phil managed to keep his voice steady, but the way his arms went limp was not smooth at all. Only Clint’s acrobatic history kept them both from landing in a pile of broken bones and bleeding down the drain. “I can’t… There’s…”

“Hush, babe,” Clint soothed, shutting off the water with his elbow as he took Phil’s face in his hands, one thumb rubbing the corner of Phil’s lips. Phil leaned into the touch and closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath. “It’s okay, sir. Let’s get out of here and talk about this, okay?”

Phil forced himself to move enough to nod and unlatch the door. He stumbled out of the stall into the microscopic bathroom, grabbing the towel from his morning shower. 

“We’ll have to share,” he said through numb lips, rubbing mechanically at his body. He had to stop when the shaking in his hands became hard enough for him to drop the towel. “You can… you can use it to…”

“Let me,” Clint said gently, and the heat of him was pressed along Phil’s back, something to lean against: something solid, grounding. Phil closed his eyes and leaned with everything he had. He could feel the shift of muscle and bone as Clint grabbed the towel off the floor with his toes and then took it in hand to rub over Phil’s chest, down each arm, over the water in his hair. Clint kept up a steady murmur of low, soothing sounds, but Phil was too caught in his own thoughts to understand the words.

Certainly physical therapy and the daily training regime had Phil stronger than he had been in years. But even at his peak in his twenties, he would not have been able to lift someone Barton’s size so easily, support his weight with one arm. Phil had always had hands like bricks, but now, thinking about recent missions, it did seem that he was hitting with a bit more force. What was this body? What had they done to it?

“Tahiti was…” Phil said, and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. He breathed through another wave of panic, Clint’s arms were wrapped across Phil’s chest, fingers on his sternum, matching their breathing. “It’s a cover-up. It’s a lie.” 

“Tahiti?” Clint asked in a whisper. “What did they do when they sent you to Tahiti?”

“It was a magi…” Phil bit his lip again with a strangled whimper.

“Awww shit, Phil,” Clint moaned, spinning Phil around and clinging. Phil pressed his face into the hard muscles of Clint’s shoulder and clung back.

A few long minutes of holding - and there were no tears or shuddering breaths from Phil, and no gentle strokes through Phil’s hair nor any shushing noises from Clint, honest - and Phil pulled away. 

“I’m okay, Clint,” Phil said. He ran a hand over his face, trying to calm the adrenal-response that had his heart racing and his breath ragged and shallow. “Look, I know they did something to me. Usually it doesn’t… it usually doesn’t hit me so hard. Not since Bed-Stuy, since you... But this… Why hadn’t I noticed before?”

“I’m just going to take comfort in the fact that this probably means you haven’t been lifting Earth-saving superheros in your shower before now,” Clint said. Phil leaned in to kiss the cheeky grin off of Clint’s lips. 

“No, Hawkeye,” Phil said, pulling back and crossing his arms over his chest with one raised eyebrow. Don’t blush, Phil. Don’t blush... “Captain Rogers has not visited the Bus.” Dammit, I’m probably blushing.

Clint laughed, and Phil melted into the arms that reached for him, sinking in chest to chest. Clint was always hot to the touch with all his muscle. Hot to the libido, too. His skin was still damp under Phil’s hands and lips, and it smelled of oil and leather, rain and something indescribable that was entirely Clint. Phil ran his lips along the edge of Clint’s jaw, tasting his own blood from where he had bitten his lip earlier. He trailed his tongue down the side of Clint’s neck, felt the vibration of a nearly silent moan under his lips as he pressed them to the hollow of Clint’s throat. Phil’s hands traced the swell of Clint’s pecs, the hard plane of his stomach, the deep lines inside his hipbones. They stroked around Clint’s tight waist and then back and down over the defined muscles of Clint’s ass. 

Arousal flared in Phil’s gut, and he clung to it, using it to push back his panic. He felt his heartbeat steady, still elevated, but now for a completely different reason. Clint whimpered when Phil bit, gently at first, and then harder into the meat of Clint’s shoulder.

“Phil,” Clint whispered, his voice breathless. “I don’t know what you want from me here.”

“My bed is slightly larger than the shower,” Phil whispered back. “If you’re interested in seeing what else my new-found strength could be good for.”

“Fu-u-u-uck,” Clint hissed, and his nails dug into Phil’s back. “You lead, and I’ll follow, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In tomorrow’s chapter of Firewall, the Short Bus team finally tracks down their quarry and Clint finally tracks down Phil’s bed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Skye was a very, very good girl, they might not kick her out of the Bus afterwards, if he talked. At the least-- she might find out whether Ronin had been using her all this time, before she was dumped on her ass.  
> ****  
> “As long as they all end with you and me on that bed...” Clint answered, wrapping his arms around Phil’s waist and spreading one large hand across Phil’s ass. “How do you want me first?”

“Stop!” Skye said, and she didn’t mean her heart (although that had, too). She tapped at the map, talking fast to try and keep herself from thinking, just for a moment. “Fitz, are you seeing this? I think he’s pulled over.”

Silence on the comms.

The little blip had stopped, just short of what looked like the state line, off to the side of the interstate. They were maybe, _maybe_ five miles away. Her own map was a composite version, not up to date, but Fitz could try and pull the feeds from whatever satellites were up at the moment or any cameras that might be in the area, to give them the current lay of the land. And if he couldn’t, she was still going to need him to triangulate the exact vehicle. Fitz wasn’t answering.

If they lost Ronin now….

Fitz’s voice crackled on the line and her heart leapt… up. It leapt _up_. 

“No-- I’m not at the-- hold on,” there was a long pause. “Sorry… thought I heard something upstairs. Probably one of Jemma’s rats.” Popcorn munching. “Okay, yes I see it. Give me a moment to see what’s out there and I’ll feed it to your tablet.”

Skye gulped her affirmative. May hit the lights and the triple digits near simultaneously.

It turned out, it wasn’t a hard call to make at all.

Accidentally-on-purpose dropping feeds for a half second to give a guy who’d helped her time to run, that was one thing. But deliberately fuck things up now? She couldn’t do that to her team, to the two people in front of her. One of whom had taken a jet all the way to South Ossetia to rescue the other, acting on intel _Skye’d_ uncovered in a highly irregular fashion. The other of whom… was still alive after being sent into an op with no plan for extraction. 

It was very likely going to cost her everything, but she was just gonna have to go with it, because they were all tired and frustrated and confused and it was their mission to catch this creep.

So she was going to make damn sure that happened.

And if Skye was a very, very good girl, they might not kick her out of the Bus afterwards, if he talked. At the least-- she might find out whether Ronin had been using her all this time, before she was dumped on her ass.

___

 

“So you sleep in your office?” Clint said for the third time, as if he felt the answer _should_ change, should stop being offensive. Phil could feel his hot eyes on his back as he bent to flip open the couch and pull back the black plaid comforter. “How did I not know this?”

“You had your camera too far from the bed, I guess,” Phil said primly. “Sorry.” He shrugged in a not-apology, taking a bit longer than necessary with the bed to give the amused smirk time to fade off his face. Not that it did any good, because Clint was wearing a knowing grin when Phil straightened and turned around. “Next time, check your intel before sending in your spies. I thought I had taught you that much at least.”

“Seriously, Phil,” Clint said, brushing his fingers over pieces of Phil’s collection that he obviously remembered from the previous office - and from Phil’s apartment. “I just thought you were wandering around with the lights down to get the office settled for the night. I have seen you put your paperwork to bed before.”

“Under the circumstances,” Phil answered, “I find I have to distrust either your eyesight or your memory. You remember the paperwork routine, but not what it looks like when I put _myself_ to bed.”

Clint huffed a laugh and then gave Phil a fantastic view of his ass as he leaned down to admire a small model Corvette on a shelf. Phil walked across the office, his bare feet not making a sound.

“Is this the girl from your old office?” Clint asked, staying bent and stroking the paint with one finger. Phil hummed an affirmative as he reached out to catch Clint’s hips, stepping close to rub his groin across Clint’s naked ass. Clint straightened quickly, arching to press more tightly against Phil’s body.

“Do the room decorations really matter right now?” Phil asked softly, tugging to turn Clint into his arms. Clint, for all his muscular bulk, had this way of fitting himself into Phil’s embrace as if he were smaller, and the thrill of power Phil got from being allowed to feel large and protective had never gone away. Phil threaded the fingers of one hand into Clint’s hair and pulled him closer. Clint’s blissful sigh eased another knot of tension out of Phil’s back. “I thought we had a few experiments to conduct.”

“As long as they all end with you and me on that bed...” Clint answered, wrapping his arms around Phil’s waist and spreading one large hand across Phil’s ass. “How do you want me first?”

“On your knees,” Phil answered, and he could not tell if Clint’s knees gave out, or if he had meant to drop so quickly. “Fuck!” Phil hissed, backing up until he could brace his hands on the edge of his desk. Clint shuffled after him on his knees, already fully hard, eyes dark and eager. Phil reached one hand out to catch Clint’s rumpled blond spikes. “Make this one good for me,” he ordered.

“Have I ever failed to make it good, sir?” Clint asked, looking up through his lashes with a cocky grin. 

“Shut up and get busy, Specialist.” And that was the last coherent sound either of them made for several minutes. Phil could not stop the gentle roll of his hips into the wet heat of Clint’s mouth, and, if the choked moans were anything to go by, Clint did not want him to. Phil watched the obscene display of wicked blue-green eyes and hollowing cheeks until he felt his control wavering, and then he let his own eyes close and his head drop limply back on his neck. So good, so familiar, so right.

He was hit by a wave of memory: the first time Clint had done this for him- to him. It had been in a different office, one that had an uncomfortable couch and no glowing skylight. And then there were times against battered desks in ratty motels and one heady time in a barely-private field office in New Mexico…

Phil’s fingers clenched around the edge of the desk, and he opened his eyes.

“Mmm, Clint. Back off a bit, but suck harder,” Phil gasped. “Use your hand to… yes. God, yes!” He chanced a look back down, and saw Clint’s free hand sliding up his own thigh. “No touching,” Phil managed to growl. Clint promptly moved his hand back to Phil’s hip while the fingers of the other continued to stroke Phil’s balls, cupping them, occasionally giving a gentle tug. 

Clint tipped his head enough to wink at Phil once before he exhaled hard through his nose and sank all the way down Phil’s cock, throat spasming around the head, and that was all it took for Phil to come undone. The hand not in Clint’s hair spasmed against the wood of his desk, and Phil locked his knees, trying not to collapse as Clint swallowed over and over before sliding off with a graphic slurp. Phil tugged at Clint’s hair, and Clint got the idea, launching to his feet and allowing Phil to pull him in for a rough, graceless kiss. 

“Holy hell, that was hot,” Clint whispered when Phil released his lips. His dark eyes were inches from Phil’s, full of lust and heat and hunger, and Phil felt another shiver of pleasure sweep through his body. “Watching you lose every bit of your buttoned up Agent persona, watching you fall apart just because of me.” Phil was shaking with how desperately he wanted to fall to his own knees and return the favor, but that wasn’t what he had planned. 

Phil pulled Clint in for another kiss, letting his arms - still shaking from his orgasm- wrap Clint tightly against his chest. And then he slid his hands down further, locking them together just below the perfect swell of Clint’s ass. He heaved and found that, while it was not easy, he could, in fact, lift Clint again. Phil panted into Clint’s shoulder for a moment while considering his options. His desk was right here, but it was only three steps to the bed. Desk sex was always exciting with Clint’s flexibility, but the bed...

“Tell me you want this,” Phil said softly, face pressing into Clint’s neck. Please tell me you’re not just trying to humor me, he meant but didn’t say.

“Yes,” Clint breathed. “God, yes, Phil. Never don’t want you.”

Phil fought a full-body quiver at those words and tightened his grip to keep Clint from slipping. He hitched Clint a fraction higher and took the few steps to the foot of the bed.

“And what do you want from me?” 

“Anything.” Clint’s hands twitched where they rested, wrapped lightly around Phil’s biceps, pressing his nails in with nearly enough pressure to hurt. “Please, anything. Just… want you, Phil. Please.”

Phil pressed a tender kiss to the bottom of Clint’s jaw, and then let go with a bit of a shove, throwing Clint backward to sprawl on the mattress. “‘Anything’ could be a dangerous proposition, Clint.” 

Clint stretched, arms and legs flexing, drawing the line of his torso and hips taut, eyes dark and grin challenging. Phil knew from experience that Clint only begged because of how much it turned Phil on. And it was working as well now as it always did. 

“You know what’s unfair?” Phil asked, making his tone conversational as he sank down to sit on the bed beside Clint’s hip. “All that time you were watching me, and I never got to see this.”

Clint relaxed and twisted his arms behind his head, lifted a knee to plant one foot on the bed. He affected a pout, eyes glinting with a challenge. Phil ignored the pulse of heat in his groin.

“You’re looking now,” Clint said. “Like what you see?”

Phil reached out to run his fingers from Clint’s shoulder, down his ribs, across the angle of his hip, and down one thigh with a whisper-soft touch. Clint lost the pout, eyes falling shut and lips dropping open a fraction as his muscles flexed under the touch. The late afternoon sunlight spilled through the windows, turning Clint’s golden skin into living marble, adding fire to the tips of his rumpled hair. Phil found he had nearly stopped breathing as he looked at the Adonis spread across his always-lonely bed.

“Jesus, Clint,” Phil whispered, leaning over to touch the tip of his tongue to one of Clint’s nipples. He followed his tongue with his teeth and shifted his jaw, rolling the hard nub along the sharpness. Clint’s hips bucked, and Phil backed off, sitting up to press both hands back against Clint’s hot skin. “Wish you had told me about the camera back in New York. The things I could have shown you since then. If I’d known your eyes were on me in my office... Would’ve taken off more than my tie for paperwork. I could have turned that plane toward the bed at night, given you a hell of a show, opened myself up, knowing you were panting for me.”

Clint rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms out to the sides, fingers clenching against the sheets. Phil saw a one blue-green eye open to watch while Clint’s breathing picked up and his hips twitched against the bed.

“Could’ve stood over my desk,” Phil climbed onto the mattress and straddled Clint’s thighs. “Unzipped, thought of your eyes on me…” Both of Clint’s eyes were open now, widening and growing darker as Phil reached down to jack his own slowly-growing erection.

Clint focused Phil’s hand, panting now, massive chest heaving. “I’m glad your nonexistent refractory period hasn’t worn off yet. Whatever else they did to you, that can stay.”

Phil felt a wicked smile grow on his face, and he put a little hip action into his strokes, thrusting into the ring of his fist.

“Would’ve mouthed your name,” he said. Nearly all of the color was gone from Clint’s irises now, and he was trembling between Phil’s thighs. “Never looked away from the camera. Known you were seeing what thoughts of you do to me. Would you have gotten off, watching me come?”

“Phil!” Clint’s voice was ragged. “Come on, don’t just… I want… Need you to…”

“Forgetting how to speak already?” Phil asked mildly. He ran his free hand over his own chest, carefully avoiding the scars: not the reminder he needed right now. “But you need to tell me what you want, what you need.”

“Where the fuck did you learn to talk like that, sir?” Clint asked. His hands twitched, obviously wanting to grab.

Phil let himself drop forward, catching his weight with his hands on Clint’s shoulders. “Where do you think, Clint,” he said, and then closed the distance between their mouths. Clint’s hips lifted to grind against Phil, and Phil did not even try to stop his moan. He felt Clint’s arms circle his shoulders, fingers digging desperately at his back.

“Not this way,” Phil said, pushing himself loose with some effort. “Roll over.” He climbed off the bed to rummage around in a cabinet in the corner. When he stood up, holding a bottle of lube and a box of condoms, Clint was on his hands and knees, a slight trembling flickering along the muscles of his back.

“Come on, sir,” Clint snapped, shaking his hips. “Hurry up!”

“And if I’d rather take my time?” Phil asked, tipping his head to admire the view.

“Then take your damn time! Doesn’t matter to me if your team gets back and finds you balls-deep in my ass.”

Phil chuckled and climbed onto the bed. He poured slick onto the fingers of his right hand, rubbing his thumb over them to warm it a bit. He reached for Clint’s hip with his left, holding them both steady.

“You may regret that mouth, Clint,” he said, and then sank two fingers into Clint’s ass to the middle knuckle. Clint bucked against his hand with a gasp, and Phil forced himself to slow a moment. “Okay?”

“Won’t be if you stop,” Clint said, dropping to his elbows and leaning his face into his folded arms. He gasped again when Phil scissored his fingers as he pulled them out a bit and then pressed them in deeper.

“Oh, I don’t intend to stop,” Phil answered pleasantly. He twisted his wrist, enjoying the muffled groan Clint gave in return. “Not until you’ve gotten me off one more time before you have to leave.”

“And what about me?” Clint asked, turning his head so Phil could see his trademark Hawkeye smirk. 

“Have I ever left you wanting?” Phil kept his hand moving quickly, being more efficient than gentle, watching the slight tremble of Clint’s back turn into spasms that began at his shoulders and continued down his thighs.

“You remember the part where you died, right?” And, ouch, even with Clint’s playful grin… Gallows humor apparently still had its place in their bedroom (bathroom, office, boardroom, occasional supply closet) activities. 

Phil shook his head and slapped lightly at Clint’s thigh with the hand that wasn’t busy in Clint’s ass. “It wasn’t on purpose,” he answered dryly. “And just for that…”

Phil withdrew his fingers quickly, broke the seal on the brand new box of condoms, ripped a foil packet open with his teeth, and rolled the latex down his now almost painfully hard dick. He put one hand on Clint’s ribs, lined up, and began to push in, slowly but firmly. Clint’s back arched under his hand, shoulders flexing, legs beginning to shake.

“Fuck, Phil,” Clint groaned. “Oh, fuck. Go! Fuck!”

“Such a mouth on you,” Phil said. He pressed in the last inch. “Do you kiss your former handler with that mouth?”

Clint sucked in air to reply, but Phil gave him no chance to get mouthy, pulling out and ramming back home. Another thrust. Another. Phil settled into a punishing pace. 

“God, yes, Phil!” Clint shouted. Phil grabbed him by the shoulders to pull him up, broad back pressed against Phil’s chest.

“I already told you to keep it down once today,” Phil said, voice calm, pleasant, even as his hips kept up the pace. Clint’s head dropped back to Phil’s shoulder as Phil wrapped a hand gently across the front of his throat. The other hand trailed down Clint’s chest, twisting hard at a nipple on the way past, down the flexing muscles of his stomach, and wrapped around Clint’s straining dick. “Need you to be quiet for me. But I want to hear you, so don’t go totally silent.”

“Phil,” Clint said softly, breath tickling Phil’s cheek. “I’ve missed this. Needed this. You…” He reached up to wrap one arm over Phil’s shoulder, the other reaching low around Phil’s back. “Fuck, missed you. Watching you was torture, but I had to see… had to know if it was you…”

Phil slowed the pace of his hips and his hand, pulling Clint more tightly to his chest. He ran his lips over the shell of Clint’s ear, down his neck, biting at the shoulder, and then turned his head to nuzzle along the bicep resting against his own shoulder before biting that, too.

“But I couldn’t tell, and it was fucking torture,” Clint went on, his eyes were shut and his body was slack against Phil’s letting himself be fucked, used. “Oh, fuck! Good. You’re so damn good, Phil.” Clint sighed and pressed a sloppy kiss to Phil’s jaw. “Then you showed up, and you felt so perfect against me, around me. Thought it was a trick. Couldn’t believe it, that you were back. That you were… Oh, shit, yes… There… Ungh.”

Phil squeezed harder with his arms, his cheek tight against Clint’s.

“It’s me, Clint,” Phil said hoarsely. He incrementally slowed his hips until he could reach down to hold the condom and pull out. He wrapped both arms tighter around Clint’s shoulders again at Clint’s whine of desperation and loss. “I’m here. Don’t know how, don’t know what happened, but it’s me.”

Clint melted to the mattress when Phil pressed against him, and then rolled at the urging of a hand on his hip so they were facing each other. Phil leaned over him, pressed their mouths together, and smoothly pushed back into Clint’s tight heat. Clint bucked under him, and Phil repeated the angle on the next thrust.

“There, babe?” he asked against Clint’s lips. Another thrust. “Like that?”

Clint’s only answer was to wrap his legs tightly around Phil’s hips, pulling him in harder with each thrust. Phil dug one arm under Clint’s lower back, lifting to make the angle more comfortable, and braced the other on the top of Clint’s shoulder. He tried to go back to the brutal tempo from before, but found that he couldn’t, too caught in the roll of their bodies moving together. Their foreheads rested together, gasps of breath passing from mouth to mouth.

“Harder, Phil,” Clint begged in a whisper, nails raking down Phil’s back, carefully trailing around the welts of the scars behind his heart. “Make me want to scream. Wanna feel it tomorrow. Wanna feel you for a fuckin’ week!”

Phil kept the same slow pace but put more force behind his hips. Clint reached up to brace a hand above his head. 

“Yeah, like that,” Clint was babbling, his body writhing under Phil’s, slick with sweat and flushed red from hairline to hips. “Fuck me, babe. Fuck me! God, gonna make me come. Fuck I need… Give me… Oh, fuck! Phil! Perfect! Need you... I luh…” His words cut off into a deep growl as he came, rubbing his cock against Phil’s abs, hot, white stripes adding to the slide between their stomachs and chest.

The clenching dragged Phil over the edge, and he locked his teeth in the muscle of Clint’s shoulder to keep from screaming down the plane. His arms gave out at last, and he collapsed on the sticky chest below him.

“That was fucking amazing, sir,” Clint said calmly.

Phil began laughing at the use of the title, and felt Clint’s body shake with answering laughter.

“Let’s go shower this mess off and figure out where my team is,” Phil said, pulling out while Clint scrunched up his face in a look of displeasure. “Need to get you off this plane before we get caught in my bunk.”

“Wha’s matter, sir,” Clint’s voice was slightly slurred as he slipped further into post-sex relaxation. “Ashamed to have a lowly Level Seven in your fancy Level Eight hide-a-bed?”

“Of course not, Barton,” Phil answered, standing up and dragging Clint up after him. “Up, shower. No, I’d be ashamed if they figured out I am actually human enough to experience sexual desire.”

“Still classified information?”

“That’s classified."

Clint gave a snort of laughter and leaned into Phil’s embrace, mouthing up the side of his neck. “Phil?”

Phil hummed at him, stretching his chin up, trying to give Clint more access to his throat.

“There is one other reason I didn’t want to tell you about the camera,” Clint said softly.

Phil was three steps away before he could process that he’d released Clint and moved. Clint’s eyes were very wide and very vulnerable, and Phil hoped it wasn’t an act.

“I wasn’t done watching you yet.” Clint did not look away as he spoke. “I missed you so fucking bad, and just being able to watch was enough to help. Sometimes.”

Phil reached for Clint, pulling him back into his arms and trying to fit their bodies together. 

“Missed you, too, Clint.”

\-------

As it turned out, there were no satellites currently passing over the rest stop on the side of the road, though if there had been, they could have seen _everything_ on the near-lunar expanse of dry grass that stretched around them. They were going in blind and nearly without cover (she could so do secret agent talk), not that it seemed to phase May and Ward at all.

The wayside rest was open but silent. There were four trucks of various sizes parked in the cratered parking lot, plus a VW microbus so ancient it could have been the original chartreuse Friends of Jesus transport in that one stupid song.

Ward had jumped out while May drove slowly through the section of parking lot designated for the big rigs. He disappeared behind one of the few scraggly trees that surrounded the squat green-roofed building. The entrance was between two weird concrete berms that hid him from view of anyone inside. 

May parked in front, next to the microbus, eased herself out, and stretched just like any other weary driver. Which, Skye guessed, she probably was. Skye popped her earbuds in and leaned back. She must have managed “bored teenager” sufficiently well, because May gave her an infinitesimal smile of approval through the glass. 

Skye resisted the urge to pop a double thumbs up. 

“C’mon, Fitz,” she said to the air, “have you got _anything_ for me?”

“I’m working on it, I really am! But this is the best I can pinpoint the signal for now. You’ll have to search each of the vehicles individually. I should have sent Doc with you, I-- oh, wait,” he broke off suddenly. “Look, Jemma’s getting something for me-- yes, no, that’s not it! We never connect that one to the network, you can’t get it to stop-- I know it would, but that would require connecting Doc to, oh yeah-- look, Skye, I’ll be back on in a minute. I think I can patch a software fix to your phones that will let them trace bugs like Doc does.”

“Yes, but Fitz, Doc _missed_ this one--” Skye said.

“I know, I know, but if I just reconfigure the cascading-- yes, Jemma, but I just need to tell her how I’m going to--” 

“It’s okay, Fitz,” Skye cut in. “I’ll hear about it later. May, Ward, we’re still doing physical searches.”

The other two were under comm silence, but there was a little huff on the line that Skye _strongly_ suspected was Ward’s way of saying “who’s ‘we’, Kemosabe?”

May had gone through the minibus like a terrier on speed, and taken off towards the long-haul trucks on the other side of the parking lot. 

“I’m searching the cabs first,” she’d said as they were pulling in. “It’s more likely to be there. If we have to do a full search of the trailers, we’re going to _need_ help from you Fitz.”

Two clicks on the line told her that the first cab was done-- and empty. Skye fidgeted, trying not to look back out the window every couple seconds like some kind of awkward fidgety suspicious… fidgeter.

She did see the beefy guy come strolling out of the rest stop, though, and stop for a moment in front of a trashcan. He lingered there for long enough that she sat up straight and craned her neck to follow him better.

He was big, yeah, but it seemed to be mostly muscle, near as she could tell under the white tour t-shirt. Blonde, kinda floppy-haired under a dingy yellow and black bandana, and a weird dragon-kinda thing in black on the t-shirt when he turned around. She wasn’t sure whether she was staring at him because _guh, look at those guns_ (and cuffs-- god, why did he have to be wearing cuffs?) or whether it was the way he’d started heading straight for _her_.

No, no, not her, it couldn’t be her, he was going to turn around and head for whichever of the rigs was his. 

He didn’t. He did, however, pull keys out of his pocket as he sauntered over, and Skye had an epiphany.

It went kind of like this, and it did so out loud over comms:

“Holy fuck, Ward, how did hot pirate dude get by you? He’s got to be, like, a ninja-aaaaaaaaah! Him, guys, he’s out here! He _owns the fucking Mystery Machine_.”

Ward maintained radio silence, and so did May, but it was the heaviest comms silence she’d ever heard, and she’d lately taken to babbling at A.C. over comms whenever she got bored, reading him shit from reddit and buzzfeed and trying to make him snicker.

Well, it had worked once.

“Guys, I don’t care, get _over_ here,” she said, and fumbled with the latch to the SUV. For a single bewildered, moment, she was sure May had engaged the childproof locks. Again.

Then the door was open, blocking his access to his vehicle. And Skye was sliding out of the seat and right straight into the dragon-bedecked pecs of maybe-Ronin.

“Hi!” she said brightly. The pirate-ninja stared down at her.

“Hi?”

There was a long pause, while he looked down at her, then past her to the driver’s side of his fluorescent monstrosity of a vehicle, then back to the still-open door of the SUV.

“I’m Skye!” she said at last, brightly, doing her best doe-eye, and wondering how much this was going to hurt.

“Hi, Skye.” His face remained bewildered, and he looked back to his bus, again. “Um, could I get into my car, you think?”

“Yeah, um, about that, I think I should warn you we might have, kinda-sorta, ah… scratched your paint job. I’m sorry! Just a little scratch. Probably. But, you know, it would have been a real douche move to just leave, right? Soooo… we should probably exchange insurance information or something, I guess?”

“Nah,” he laughed, running a hand down the battered back end of the glow-in-the-dark thing. “I can’t tell old scratches from new at this point. But thanks for the offer.” He reached past her and began to pull the SUV door closed. Skye was herded forward by the closing door, and straight into him.

“Really. It’s fine. I promise,” he said.

She looked up into his-- _holy_ those were some blue fucking eyes-- and gulped.

“No, but, do you just want to take a look and make sure? Just in case? I can show you. See,” she bent down, wedging herself in the narrow space between the vehicles, and pointed at a random scratch. He frowned.

“Nope, that was already there.”

“You sure? How about this one?”

“Skye--” he was looming now, practically blocking out the fucking sun and that was getting a bit _too_ cliche. “Please move. I’m in a hurry.” He reached out a hand, grabbed her arm. His hand was heavy as iron and his grip was way too fucking vise-like. She stumbled as he dragged her backwards.

“There,” he said, practically picking her up and setting her back down next to the SUV. “I’m going to get going now. Unless you have any further problems with that.”

“I might,” Ward said, behind him. 

“Mmmm,” May agreed, on the other side of Skye.

She felt herself sag, her ears buzz, and closed her eyes for a moment. She thought it was in relief, though it tasted awfully sour on her tongue.

____

Phil could feel Clint watching him from behind as he pulled on a jacket over his fresh shirt and adjusted his perfectly knotted tie. A quick glance back showed Clint, sitting on the end of the unfolded bed with his hands folded between his knees, was indeed watching with heated eyes and a sour expression. He was also dressed in a t-shirt that, judging from the strain across the chest, actually belonged to Phil.

“Really, Clint?” Phil said, fondness curling his lips and warming his chest. “Stealing my clothes? Isn’t that a little… obvious?”

“What, because anyone can tell the difference between my SHIELD tees and yours?” Clint’s sulky-face was practiced, a parody of four years old in a full-grown (and how well grown he was) man. “Traded mine out for one from your hamper. I need _something_ that smells like you.”

Phil chuckled and walked over to ruffle Clint’s hair, still damp from their shared shower. He leaned down to exchange a brisk kiss, dragging over 200 pounds of pout up with him as he straightened.

“I’m not sure I approve of this new-found manly strength,” Clint grumbled, flopping against Phil’s chest. “I would rather be the one doing the man-handling.”

“I would rather be man-handled,” Phil told him, hands dropping to Clint’s sharp hips, “but my team is on their way back, and I’m not sure even May is equipped to deal with seeing either of us handling man. FitzSimmons have moved to the lab, and we still need to get you off the Bus.”

“Forward exits?” Clint mumbled, his lips running gently along Phil’s jaw, until Phil felt a stirring in his groin and pulled away. He turned his back and thought of Director Fury. In lingerie. Doing the cha-cha slide. 

And there it went.

“Too obvious, even from a distance, and we have all the locals out there staring.” Phil narrowed his eyes at the schematic behind his desk. “Going to have to go out the way we came in.”

“So more sneaking?” Clint looked way too enthusiastic about the idea.

“Up for some climbing?” Phil asked, smoothing over his tie one last time. As if he didn’t know the answer. As if Clint would choose to be on the ground when he could be doing his monkey act.

Ten minutes later, the two men were clinging to ventilation tubing, inching toward the slowly reddening glow of early sunset outside the still-open cargo ramp. The only illumination inside the cargo hold came from the low-angled lighting below the ducts and the dim glow of FitzSimmons’ work stations that were certain to blind them to most movement outside the lab. Behind their wall of glass, FitzSimmons were arguing, waving around tech and arms, obviously shouting words that no one but they could understand. 

“Sir?” Clint said, voice low but still trembling with muffled laughter. Phil kicked his feet to keep the polished toes of his shoes from dipping into the beam of a light. It was surprisingly difficult to maintain a sense of dignity while flapping about like a bat on a cave wall. 

“Shut up, Barton,” Phil growled between gritted teeth. 

“Not saying anything, sir,” Clint replied. “Just admiring the view.”

Phil pretended he wasn’t blushing and wiggled along the pipe until he was clear to scramble down the last of the crew seats and walk down the ramp. He didn’t need to look back to know that Clint was already following him, and, smoothing his hair and his tie one last time, Phil squared his shoulders to face the bemused crowd that had gathered on the runway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow, in the final chapter of Firewall, Clint is great at sneaking but maybe less so at communicating, Skye learns to be careful what you wish for, and Phil is an evil, evil man.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil dropped his hands to Clint’s hips and looked disapproving. “So all that meek little posturing and blatant sexualism was just a distraction for your sleight of hand?”
> 
>  
> 
> **************
> 
> He wasn’t Ronin. he _couldn’t_ be. And yet, Ronin now had his open, light-eyed face in her mind.

“How long until the team gets back?” Jemma asked as she walked back into the lab from the storage areas beyond.

“Dunno,” Fitz answered. “Have you counted all your rats yet? Which ones got out?”

“They’re all in there,” Jemma replied, and sniffed at his skeptical expression. “I counted twice, Fitz. I assure you it’s not hard to count to twelve.”

“If one of those things did get up to Coulson’s office…”

“Relax! They’re all in their cages,” she said blithely. “Speaking of Coulson, what kind of contact do you think SHIELD has out here that he knows? Do you think it’s someone in intelligence, or someone with a scary criminal past?”

“How would I know?” said Fitz. “Are you sure you got all of those rats, Jemma? I thought I heard another in the cargo hold a little bit ago.”

“For the last time: mine are all accounted for. Oh, it would be just our luck to have to stop for a bug and pick up some kind of local Kansas rats. Maybe I can trap them, see if they have any…”

“Jemma, if there are wild rats on the Bus,” Fitz told her, speaking slowly and clearly, “we will call in a SHIELD team to exterminate them. Or turn Ward loose on them. You may not keep them.”

“Fitz!”

___

Phil ploughed through the crowds of locals - staff and security from the airport, pilots, passengers, farmers and advertisers and nosey neighbors - giving them half statements as he went. Clint followed a few paces behind, trying to blend with the mob, feed cap securely pulled over his eyes. He spent the time it took to cross the runway equally admiring the efficient way Phil dealt with the crowd and the way his suit jacket blew open at the vent to expose the well-tailored seat of his slacks.

“If you will all give me just a moment to deal with this one matter…” Phil said, adroitly sidestepping a hand that reached for his arm. “Back with you shortly.” A brisk nod.

Phil slipped around the side of the hanger to the place he had parked Lola, and Clint quickened his steps to catch up. Phil’s hand shot out of the thickening shadows and grabbed Clint’s arm, jerking him around the corner and firmly against Phil’s hard chest.

“Taking too long, Barton,” he growled against Clint’s ear. Clint felt goosebumps spring up from the warmth of Phil’s breath.

“You’re the one who was glad-handing the locals, Bossman,” Clint returned. He slipped his palms under the lapels of Phil’s jacket and leaned in to bump his nose against Phil’s jaw. Phil wrapped his arms around Clint’s shoulders, and Clint tried to tuck himself in even smaller. This close, he had to fight the urge to rumple; Phil was gorgeous as Agent Coulson, but Clint still hadn’t been able to stifle his grumbled “not fair” as the knot on that tie had been snugged up to Phil’s neck.

“I neither glad-handed nor allowed myself to be handed-gladly,” Phil replied austerely. He took a step closer, and Barton found his shoulders pressed back against the corrugated metal wall of the building. “And how do you always manage to get me saying the most ridiculous things?”

“My secret’s out,” Clint answered, unbuttoning Phil’s jacket to slide his arms underneath. “I do have a superpower.”

“Never let me hear your origin story,” Phil said. Clint shivered as Phil mouthed down his neck from his ear to the join of his shoulder. “Although, speaking of stories, would you mind telling me where the cell phone that sent my team on a wild goose chase almost to Oklahoma came from?”

Clint tilted his head back to laugh and choked a bit when Phil leaned down to bite his throat. Phil, the asshole, straightened up looking entirely unphased. Clint scowled, but Phil just fractionally lifted an eyebrow as if to say, “Well?”

Ungraciously conceding defeat, Clint sighed and explained. “It was when you were trying to rear-end that truck. Phone was in my pocket, so I palmed it, stuffed it under my thigh, and hoped I could distract you. Made sure the GPS was on and that it was linked to the same user account, and then I tossed it at some electric lime thingy heading the other way. Easy target, a van like that.”

Phil dropped his hands to Clint’s hips and looked disapproving. “So all that meek little posturing and blatant sexualism was just a distraction for your sleight of hand?”

“What! No!” Clint said. “No! I mean, yeah, I was hoping to ditch the phone in a way that would give us the best possible chance of having some time together, but I figured I was getting dumped, or at best, shit-canned. So I just thought that maybe I could distract the team for a bit, and we’d at least get to talk. But I meant it, Phil.” Clint’s hands tightened against Phil’s ribs, feeling for his heartbeat. “I wanted you the minute I found you outside that door. Heh. Before. Since I saw you take off your tie in your office. And I am sorry I had to lie to you. I was just…”

Clint found himself pulled tightly against Coulson and being kissed hard.

“Okay,” Phil said, abruptly pushing their chests apart. “I know how to deal with my team, I think. I know what to do with the camera. My only question is how you will be able to contact me.”

Phil came easily when Clint caught his tie and reeled him in for another kiss. 

“I know the perfect way,” Clint said, grinning. “Keep an eye on your spam filter, babe. You’ll know it when you see it. The old code.”

“Get to a secure server,” Phil replied, “and sign on to the camera feed tomorrow at 23:00 New York Time. If it’s not up, you’ll know something came up on my end. Same time, any night we can both manage.” Clint couldn’t help the pout when Phil lifted his tie free from Clint’s fingers. “Now get out of here, Specialist. I need to go deal with some irate pilots.”

Clint started to walk away, but couldn’t quite go so easily. He spun back, grabbing Phil’s shoulders and dragging him in for one last, nearly violent kiss that was just teeth and growls and desperation and longing. Phil’s hands knocked the cap off his head as both of them tightened in Clint’s hair. Clint whined as Phil eased back slowly, leaving just their lips brushing.

“Be careful, Babe,” Clint said. He bit once, firmly on Phil’s bottom lip, just to hear the gasp it elicited. “Your team is good, but SHIELD is watching you pretty damned closely. If you need me…”

“I know, Clint,” Phil interrupted, pulling away impossibly slowly. “Watch your camera. And, if I really need you, I’ll just… call. Pat my half-blind, limpy dog for me.”

Clint gave him a sharp nod and slid into the shadows of the barely open side door of the hangar. He watched Phil slide into Lola with his G-Man Mask firmly in place. Before slipping away, Clint lingered to watch Agent Coulson swing into action, distracting and deflecting and looking so damned good doing it. 

So it wasn’t how Clint had planned on Phil finding out about the camera, but it could have gone worse. He shifted, getting ready to step deeper into the building and felt an ache in places that hadn’t ached in way too long. Oh yes, it could have gone worse. Not sure it could have gone better, in fact. And at least Phil didn’t know about the whole “subverting a member of the team” part yet. Even if Clint wasn’t really subverting her. Really, all he was doing was borrowing her for his personal surveillance team. Clint was going to have to figure out a way to tell Phil about that before he found out on his own, catch it on his own shoulders to keep it from collapsing on Skye. Phil would understand.

Maybe the big reveal could happen midway in a round of reciprocating blowjobs. Maybe that would keep Phil from getting too bent about it. Maybe not. 

Shit.

________

She dreamed on the way back, in dribs and drabs, half her mind still in the SUV, listening to the desultory dribbles of conversation Ward and May dropped in front of her, aware of her neck kinking and head bobbing.  
The other half of her mind was free-floating, following Ronin. 

They’d left dragon-shirt-hot-guy back at the truckstop, still halfway enraged and three-quarters bewildered. A brief search of his jeans, undertaken by Ward, had produced a purple plastic cell phone, and Fitz had confirmed it was the correct device. 

The guy insisted it had come bouncing into his open window somewhere on I-135 as he was passing through Wichita. A receipt in his pocket put him at a Sonic (Footlong Quarter Pound Coney and a Strawberry Island Breeze Slush) at the time the signal had still been active at the dingy white house. A bronze and tin sculpture of a billy goat with a potbelly full of clock gears, the approximate size and shape of a St. Bernard, corroborated his claim to be a sculptor heading to Jenks to drop off his latest work at Lyle’s Arts and Antiques. (Fitz checked. That, too, was a real place, was indeed expecting delivery of clockwork farm animals, and was wondering whether the artist would be there before closing time?) 

They’d left the guy behind at the truck stop, taking the cell with him. Scary Pirate Sculptor had insisted on getting Ward’s contact information, just in case the gallery harassed him about the delay in delivery. 

Or, you know, something. He’d been awfully cooperative during Ward’s brief but thorough frisking.

He wasn’t Ronin. he _couldn’t_ be. And yet, Ronin now had his open, light-eyed face in her mind. She dreamt of Ward and May going over the fence in the back of the dingy white house on Lulu street and finding him, perched on top of the swing set. Swooping down on them like some damn… swoopy thing. Dreamt of him small and alone, muzzy and babbling in the interrogation room, just like Ward had been-- pretended to be?-- all those months ago. Dreamt of comforting him. Dreamt of him spilling all her secrets at their feet, pooling around A.C.’s ankles, creeping up Ward’s legs as they dragged her to the open cargo ramp of the bus where Jemma stared blankly at her as she screamed, and woke up with a start to

“What the hell is that mess?”

The SUV had come to a halt near the rear of a long line of small planes. The Bus itself was wavery and looming in the fading sunset, cargo doors open as if it was going to swallow whole the little prop plane at the front of the line. 

May drove slowly past the planes: a little home-built RV-7 hobby plane, the registration number painted on its side still so new it probably squeaked. A restored Spitfire, painted in camouflage with a dashing white nose. A yellow Piper Cub with a large pit bull sitting in the passenger seat, barking at anyone who came close. A flag-themed aerial advertisement plane with punctuation issues, a couple of rich man’s toy planes, mostly abandoned, a crop duster, and a fucking World War I biplane second in line.

Just outside the cargo ramp, they found a cluster of assorted Kansasians (Kansasites? Kansanians?) of various ages, genders, and states of rage. In their midst stood Agent Phil Coulson at his very Level Eightest Coulson best.

He appeared to be ignoring them while talking to an overwhelmingly large and hairy man, his smile so fatuous it would have sent her running in the other direction. However, as soon as they stopped, they heard his mutter in their ears:

“Agent Ward, please come here.”

Ward glanced back at May and Skye, raised his eyebrows, and slid out of the SUV, turning straight into Agent Douchebag (it had taken Skye a long time to realize that he actually could act-- he just had only one character) and gaining several inches of height and girth as he stalked towards the crowd.

He was most of the way there when she heard A.C. call out 

“We can take off just as soon as the owner gets here-- and there he is now! Mr Ward, your plane is waiting for you. If you and your… companions… are ready, we’ll get out of these good peoples’ hair. Thank you all for your patience.”

And he turned around and stalked onto the Bus, leaving Ward to be surrounded by angry pilots. Skye didn’t get out of the SUV until it was in the bay and the crowd had dispersed.

___________

 

“Hey, A.C.?” Skye poked her head around the doorway to Coulson’s office, momentarily confused when she didn’t find him behind his desk.

“Yes?” He straightened abruptly in her peripheral vision, and dropped a throw cushion on his couch with all the nonchalance of a teen tossing a contraband cigarette.

“You, ah,” Skye felt a brief twinge of uncertainty, “said you wanted to see me?”

The debrief hadn’t been a long affair; the only new information had come from A.C. himself. His contact had told him there’d been a SHIELD op in Wichita earlier, taking on some kind of organization that wasn’t in their need-to-know, but that it was likely someone had been left behind to deal with the aftermath. 

It seemed likely Coulson had discovered the feed nearly as soon as it started transmitting in Wichita, so perhaps the mysterious hacker had needed to acquire SHIELD tech to finally breach the firewall. Prior inactivity could also explain how Doc had never detected it. A.C.’d arranged for the camera to be sent to a secure place for testing, and Doc was going to get an upgrade and do some extra rounds for a while. 

He’d stopped her on her way out, a gentle touch on her elbow, to ask her to see him in his office in a little while. So here she was.

“I did say that. I also said it wasn’t urgent; I was expecting you to stay down with FitzSimmons longer, I suppose.” 

Skye shrugged.

“Well, you know, no time like the present.” She tossed it off as nonchalantly as she could and flopped down onto the couch, watching him closely. He gave one of those tiny nod-smiles that she was starting to collect, like… some kind of ridiculously specific thing you collect. Morels, maybe. That was specific, right? Like, they only grew under dying trees? Or right after rain? C’mon, it totally worked.

He gave a morel smile, anyway, gone as quickly as it had come, and leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms. She crossed hers back at him, and they watched each other for a long moment.

Seeing him here amidst his planes and his watches and his paperwork released the something in her that had been knotted ever since they’d lost contact with Lola earlier in the day. 

A.C.’s in his office, and all’s right with the world.

She relaxed into the couch, then relaxed again, moving away from a lump-- which she had to have imagined. It was not a lumpy sort of couch. Just her guilty conscience making her uncomfortable.

He shifted, ducked his head again and looked straight back at her, and she sat up. No, he was distinctly uncomfortable, too.

Well. That was… the exact opposite of good. 

How thoroughly had she scrubbed that tablet of Ronin’s message to her, anyway? How often was that going to come back on her?

“A.C.? Boss?” she asked, leaning forward.

Coulson glanced over at the model of the Bus that sat on his desk, its skylight now shattered. He looked down, raised his eyebrows to himself, then looked back up at her.

“You did an excellent job today, Skye. We wouldn’t have found the burner phone without you,” he said, and she blinked.

Well… okay then?

“And don’t think I’m unaware that you must have seen it as a test of your loyalty.” He sighed. “One that was frankly unfair, given what you’ve done for this team lately.” Skye blinked again.

“I--I know it’s not that easy to forget. That I hid Miles from you guys. That I betrayed you.” Coulson’s eyebrows drew together, just fractionally.

“That you betrayed us, or that you betrayed SHIELD, Skye?”

‘That--” She gulped. “C’mon sir. You know the answer to that.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, c’mon, I’ve gotten to go to the Hub, like, once? And the one time I’m near a SHIELD facility, I totally went and hacked into it, and okay so it’s a good thing for the team that I did, I still know it didn’t exactly give you more faith in me, and you’re right that I was doing it for selfish reasons too, it’s just--” she realized she was starting to do the nervous babble thing, and dug her fingernails into the couch cushion to try and stop herself. Her fingers caught on a bit of sheet that was poking out. (What the hell, anyway? The man was as neat as a fucking...well, Army sergeant.) The momentary distraction stopped her brain long enough for her to do a hard reboot then defrag her mind. 

“I mean-- it’s the same thing isn’t it, sir? Betraying you and betraying and SHIELD?” Coulson looked up at her now, blank for the longest time.

“You know the answer to _that_ , Skye. After all, Fitz and Ward are still here, thanks to you.” 

He gestured down to her hand, where the silver tracking bracelet shone. She covered it with her other palm.

“I’ve done some recalibration to that,” he said, not looking at her. “I pity whoever’s had to go through the keystroke log files on you, and we both know you can circumvent it at need, anyway. You’ll find greater… discretion… allowed you now. SHIELD can decide to trust you on its own time; I’m tired of this game. This is my call, you’re on my team, and if I’m going to ask for trust, I have to….” he stopped and shook his head. “I don’t appreciate hypocrisy, especially in myself. Even when I understand the necessity.”

“I-- thanks. A.C., thanks.” She was halfway up, ready to hug him, before she realized he wasn’t finished, and also was very much not in the mood.

“Besides,” he continued, looking up at her finally, pinning her in place with his glance, “What you did inside SHIELD was impressive. You never know when it might come in handy again.”

“Again?”

“Maybe. I’ll let you know.”

That should have been code for “let’s find out more about your parents,” because that was the only thing that made logical sense. And it should have made her happy. Instead, she felt a ball of ice settle in the pit of her stomach.

(Ronin, spilling secrets and lies at Coulson’s feet, the tide rising, lapping at his hem, his knees….)  
Coulson had said next to nothing about the not-need-to-know enemies; Ronin could be one of those, that was clearly his drift. She wished she believed it.

Ronin _had_ been somewhere near that dingy white house and its neighbor, and both were property of SHIELD. Ronin, for all she knew, could be a disgruntled ex-SHIELD employee. Or he could be a false-flag (and he’d love it that she was finally using that term back at him) a current SHIELD employee, maybe even Coulson’s contact. If so, he hadn’t told Coulson about her, at any rate.

Coulson might not know Ronin by name ( _Oh, hon, never assume he doesn’t know_ ), but he knew _something_. And possibly not just about Ronin; she was getting a weird vibe off him about SHIELD. 

Whatever was going on, Coulson wanted her on his side.

The ice got a bit melty in the middle.

Late that night, when she was curled in the SUV with her laptop, being extremely disciplined with her newfound freedom, she saw it: an ad on the local craigslist missed connections, tagged with the private code she and Ronin had agreed on ages ago as an emergency protocol.

 _Sorry I missed you this afternoon_ , it read. _Thank you for everything you’ve done; we’ll meet soon. Until then, don’t worry. I’m watching you._

Yeah. “Don’t worry,” all right.

Fuuuuck.

___

Phil waited until Skye had latched the door behind her before he dived for the couch and tucked the errant sheet back inside.  
He hadn’t had time to properly remove all traces of Clint from the office before they’d had to sneak out. All through the debrief he’d been nervous, imagining May or Ward slipping upstairs for some reason, spotting the half-made couch, the drawer still open an inch, the agitation of the papers on his desk. Perhaps there was still even the lingering scent of sex on the air, not yet entirely dispersed by the circulation system. 

They’d waited until they were out of Wichita airspace and May had flicked the autopilot on before debriefing, but Coulson’s time had not been idly spent. He’d been checking on—checking _in_ with—FitzSimmons, doing some non-routine upgrades to certain of the Bus’s facilities—and listening to Ward complain (‘report in’) about being left to himself to herd a covey of locals off to the airport restaurant. There, Ward had paid for dinner and endured severe razzing about damned rich kids landing at the wrong airport, and what if he tried to take off and the runway was too short for the plane? He’d eventually mumbled something about the latest Stark tech, paid for a round at the bar too, and slipped out while everyone was crowded around that.

“I was not trained for that, sir,” he muttered when he got inside.

“Well past time you learned then, Agent,” Coulson replied. He’d normally have tried to de-ruffle Ward a bit more (another of those small afterlife crisis things he was learning to distinguish from the more worrisome changes), but at the moment, he wanted the man as ruffled as possible. Positively frilly, if it could be managed. Certainly in no state to notice the sleight-of-hand Coulson was about to perform with the truth during the briefing.

As soon as they finished, he disappeared up to the command deck and began to straighten up.

At least it had just been Skye; she’d noticed, yes, but only with the back of her mind. If the subtle wrongness of his office had made her a little nervous; good. She was going to need those instincts in the future.

The couch was still not right; looked a little lumpy about the edges. A tad askew. 

She’d noticed that, yes, but she’d noticed the untucked edges of himself, as well. He remembered that look of hers, the subtle “something’s wrong with the grown-ups” look, from when Clint-- too damn young, too damn good-- had used it, long ago. 

Those looks had faded as Clint had come into his own and their relationship had changed, but he’d always watched Phil closely, warmly. With intent. Even before he’d had to resort to having Natasha bug Phil’s Bus in order to do so.

And if Natasha had managed to fool Doc-- who else had? From where? If Natasha had bugged his office undetected, might not someone else from SHIELD? Suddenly, the eyes he’d imagined watching him from a distance were far less friendly.

So he’d helped Skye circumvent her SHIELD tether, so what? In all justice, if misleading one’s team and thoroughly fucking a rogue hacker was a sin great enough to merit the bracelet, one ought to have been closing about his wrist at that moment. 

Who told you life was fair, Agent?

(“I can damn well try and _make_ it fair,” Agent Barton used to hiss at him.)

The more fond of Skye that Phil got, the more he wanted her to walk a little wary of him. Just a little. After all, he’d just released her safety. It was worth her while to ask if he intended to pull the trigger, and if so, where was he aiming? Because one of these days, he was increasingly sure, he was going to aim her at SHIELD himself.

The couch looked worse. He wasn’t sure it had ever looked normal. Best to just pull the damn bed back out and get into it early, get a little reading done.

\---

 _Dear Bobo_ , the email read, _Still her fantasy at 50! Do you want to amaze your female partner today? Very good way to recharge your intimate life. Only natural ingredients, based on the ancient Italian formula_. Phil snorted, and deleted it.

“Yeah, yeah, Clint, you’re lucky you’re cute,” he muttered, and wandered over to the little Corvette Clint had been playing with earlier. He made sure his back screened his movements from the room-- just in case-- and tipped it over to reveal the model number on the bottom, and the scratched additions that looked like they were made by a child’s hand.

Well, Clint’s scrawl had always been awful, and he’d made those while he’d had three fingers in splints. But they still served their purpose-- the key to the private code he, Clint, and Natasha had developed after an op gone even more ridiculously wrong than usual. Phil paused a moment, staring at the wobbly script, waiting for the lump in his throat to dissipate.

Unless he was highly mistaken, the next spam email he saw was going to come from an east African banker. And yes, there it was.

Phil crawled back into his bed, trying not to think about Clint in it scant hours ago, panting, begging, screaming incoherent words of… of _affection_ (go with that, now is not the time to redefine anything) as he came. 

He pulled up his tablet and concentrated on the answer he was going to give at 23:00 tomorrow.

_"Mr. Roboloski,_  


_I feel quite safe dealing with you in this business proposition having_  


_gone through your remarkable profile on the internet.Though, this_  


_medium (Internet)has been greatly abused, I choose to reach you_  


_through it because it still remains the fastest,surest and most_  


_secured medium of communication .However,this correspondence is_  


_unofficial and private,and it should be treated as such. I also_  


_guarantee you that this deal is hitch free from all what you may think_  


_of.I am MR. DANIEL RAND, DIRECTOR/CEO BARCLAYS BANK KENYA_  


_NAIROBI. I am contacting you based on Trust and Confidentiality that_  


_will be attached to this deal."_

The pillows still smelled of Clint.

___

“C’mon, Lucky, c’mon inside _now_. You sniffed that corner when we went out, it hasn’t changed in 15 minutes, dog.” 

Clint crowded up behind his mangy yellow dog and hustled him inside the apartment door. Lucky looked up at him, wounded bewilderment in his one good eye, and proceeded to get underfoot at every possible moment as Clint dove for the couch and wrenched his (brand new Stark-enhanced JARVIS-approved) laptop open, fingers rattling over the keys.

22:58 and counting down to magic time.

There was something missing. Clint blinked for a moment, then bounded up and stripped off his purple t-shirt, tossing it on the floor and diving into the duffel bag still open on the floor next to the couch. He skinned into Phil’s SHIELD-issued tee, breathing in deeply as it went over his head, and flopped back onto the couch.

He got the feed up at 22:59:30, and for a moment Clint was confused, because everything was darkness-- Phil couldn’t have the minicam in his tie still, could he?

Behind him, he heard Lucky drop his leash onto the coffee table, and then a wet nose snuffled at his shoulder. He reached down absently for one scratch, then went back to hitting F5.

Nothing. For a long moment, nothing.

Of course, Phil might have gotten called away; might be on a mission right now. Or injured, or have forgotten it somehow or just… Tahiti’d it away into the back of his head.

And 23:00:32, light flooded the feed, and Clint could see where Phil had placed it.

He sat straight up, could feel the shocked grin grow so wide it threatened to split his face.

Could feel something else start to come to attention, too.

“You dirty, wonderful man,” he murmured, eyeing Phil’s hand as it adjusted the water temperature knob he’d so nearly become extremely intimate with yesterday, showing near the bottom of the frame. 

And then Phil stepped into the shower, back to the cam, and Clint had a gorgeous, close-up view of the back of his head, his neck, his shoulders as water flowed over them. And pretty much nothing else.

Clint nearly threw the laptop across the room.

“You bastard!” he yelled. Lucky whined at him. “This is payback, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Lucky nudged at the screen, and Clint huffed in a breath. Phil had turned around, and was grinning up at the camera as if he knew _exactly_ what Clint had just been yelling.

Then he nodded his perfect, infuriating, stupid head and mouthed “Yep.” 

There was nothing to do but laugh helplessly.

Onscreen, Phil was still talking, facing straight at the camera and enunciating carefully so that Clint could read every word that fell from his lips.

“I realize this is perhaps not your ideal view, but it’s the place I’m least likely to be interrupted or walked-in on. And I want to make sure you have my undivided attention.” His grin had died back into a very intense stare, one that was not doing anything to relieve the situation in Clint’s pants.

“Also,” Phil continued, “Tell Lucky hello for me.”

“He says ‘Hello,’ Lucky,” Clint said to the dog. Lucky grumbled a little in a pleased way, and then clambered up on top of Clint, enveloping him in warm dog from chin to waist, and covering half the keyboard with his muzzle. Clint tried to dislodge him, but Lucky just sighed and closed his eye.

“... and stop feeding him pizza all the time, Clint, it’s bad for him,” Phil was saying onscreen. He looked down, then up again.

“I got your messages,” he continued, “and I understand. The method is fine, but I wish you’d find some different subjects. I’m offended you think I need any help recharging my intimate life, Barton.” There was a sparkle in his eyes that Clint mistrusted immediately. “Should I remind you how I had you pinned to this wall yesterday?” Oh god, was he really going to-- “How you wanted to get on your knees for me? Open up your mouth and….”

On the minicam went on to Phil describe, mutely and in loving detail, exactly how he planned to take Clint Barton apart.

Late at night in his apartment unknown states-- and possibly countries-- away, trapped underneath at least 60 pounds of sleeping dog, Clint whimpered.

\-- FIN--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for joining us on this wild, wacky journey. There are three short WIPs to be posted in December/January, and then we will be back to furthering the plot with solutions to mysteries and greater development of character! 
> 
> Drop by and chat with us on Tumblr, leave us comments and start a conversation. We love hearing from all of you!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who is reading along. We hope you enjoy the series. Please comment! We love to hear your thoughts (and we’re both quite chatty, so you’ll get an answer).
> 
>  
> 
> You can find us on Tumblr:
> 
> [Kathar](http://kat-har.tumblr.com)  
> [faeleverte](http://faeleverte.tumblr.com)


End file.
